Escalation
by ultimateform14
Summary: A sudden homicide becomes a grueling, all night investigation in search of a killer who left his victim on the tenth floor of a hotel on the strip. While Sara, a new arrival in Las Vegas, is finding it difficult to settle in...
1. The Lights of Las Vegas

The sun was setting over the endlessly busy city of Las Vegas. The lights were shining brightly enough to be visible to the other side of the globe. Or at least, that's how it seemed to Sara Sidle as she walked at a sluggish pace down the hallways of the police department, staring out the window and carrying a folder in hand. The lights, of all different colors and formations as they blended together, were so mesmerizing... She felt like she could just stare at them all night. It was something she hadn't really noticed in San Francisco as much – although there were very bright lights there as well, they never seemed to stand out like the ones in Vegas did.

As she crossed the threshold into Grissom's office, she shook her head to clear her dreamy state of mind up. It had been a long day on a solo case and she was looking forward to going home. But first, she had to think clearly enough to turn in her report of the shift's events. Not that Grissom ever really did much with them, if the pile on his desk was any indication, but no one could say she didn't do her job, at the very least.

"Hey!" she greeted enthusiastically as she entered the room.

Grissom didn't answer. He sat hunched forward on his desk, elbows propped up. His brow was furrowed quite intensely – he was obviously very absorbed in whatever he was doing... In one hand was a magnifying glass. In the other, a smaller object she couldn't quite make out.

She squinted at it. "What's that?" she asked after a moment.

"It's a beetle," he answered shortly. "A beetle with an odd anatomy problem."

But he didn't divulge further.

So Sara tried again. "What... kind of... anatomy problem?"

"An unusually large array of extra legs," he replied. "Sometimes a bug will grow an extra leg or two, but never this many in all my years an an entomologist."

And he again fell silent, sliding the magnifying glass slowly around the tiny bug pinched between two fingers. She frowned – how much could you learn from examining the same miniscule bug body with the same magnifying glass so intensely for so long? She shrugged with the realization that, as intriguing as Grissom had always been to her, his bug fascination was something she would never be able to understand.

Minutes passed, and he didn't seem too inclined to attempt further conversation. Or reveal any more about his bug friend. So she cleared her throat and gave the folder in her hand a visual once over.

"Um..." she began, "I finished my case, so..."

"That's good."

She blinked twice. "Yeah. Yeah, it was great. Lonely case, but great."

"Mmm."

"Shall I... just... put the folder up here, then?"

"That would be great."

She sighed, and did as instructed, depositing the folder on top of the already sizable collection of them.

"Okay, then," she said, beginning to inch her way out the door. "I'm, uh... I guess I'm going home."

"Okay."

"See you tomorrow," she added.

"Yeah, sounds like a plan."

She waved formally. "Goodnight."

"Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow, Sara."

Now THAT sounded almost impatient...

_Well, sorry to bother you_, she thought impatiently to herself. Her arms came up around herself and she exhaled sharply as she headed off down the hallway. _You're the one with the plaque that says 'Night Shift Supervisor' on your desk. I'll do the job, if you really don't want to... The extra money would be fantastic._

As she went along down the hall, she came across Catherine and Warrick. They both looked about as tired as she felt. And the way Warrick's voice cracked a little when he returned her brief greeting was a confirmation to her that he hadn't slept in a while.

She stopped while they passed and watched them go into Grissom's office, where the folder Catherine was carrying joined the top of the assortment with a light slapping sound. Grissom looked up immediately, and even set his bug down on the wax paper in front of him, as they helped themselves to the chairs in front of his desk.

She didn't stick around to listen to their conversation, though. She shook her head again, as if to clear away the sudden resentment she was feeling, and continued off down the hallways. The automatic lights still hadn't kicked on, even though the sun had set minutes ago and the city was dark out. But she still recognized the room she was coming up on – or rather, the person inside of it... and he appeared to be quite energetic. She couldn't help the small smile that came to her face as she went for the door to the DNA lab hastily.

But as soon as she stepped foot inside of it, her smile faded. Greg Sanders was, as usual, listening to music. Vile music, by the sound of what was coming from his earphones... and way too loud, as was also a usual for him. Although she couldn't help feeling amused by his weird arm movements and body jerkings, she knew conversation would be a lost cause. So she threw her hands up and went away from the door.

It was quiet in the lab at this time a night. The day office and maintenance staff had gone home and were being replaced by their nighttime counterparts. But even though she could hear other people settling in for the night, the only other person she actually saw as she went was a bum-looking janitor, who seemed as absorbed with repeatedly soaking and wringing out his mop in his bucket as Grissom had been with his beetle. At least, until his good buddies had come in...

She rounded the corner into the locker room and made a beeline for her things. Swinging her locker open with more force than necessary, she rifled through the duffel bag roughly. Purse, wallet, makeup, change of clothes, hairbrush, overnight bag with spare toiletries... Yep, it was all there.

_Good_, she thought icily. _Get me the hell out of here..._

As she yanked the zipper on her bag closed and slammed her locker door shut, she almost jumped through the ceiling. The metal door had given way to the abruptly close face of Grissom.

"Jeez!" she shrieked, catching herself on her locker. "God, Grissom... Don't do that!"

His answering smile was almost shit-eating. "Sorry," he halfheartedly apologized. "I just wanted to catch you before you took off."

Her eyes flashed down to a new folder in his hand and then back up to his own eyes. "Oh, no..." she began.

"Oh, yes," he said. "Homicide, hotel on the strip. Address is in the case file. Nick will be joining you, he's just had a day off."

He thrust the folder into her hands, causing her to jolt a little, and took a step back.

"Good luck!" he added, backing away.

"Yeah, it sounds like fun," commented Warrick. "I'm out. I just came off a double, I'll see ya tomorrow."

He flung each of his long, large arms around Grissom and Catherine.

"Yeah, me too," said the latter. And she waved at Sara before disappearing around the bend. "Go get 'em, girlfriend!"

"Yeah, and that reminds me: how did your first case turn out?" she heard Grissom asking before their voices faded out again.

Sara exhaled a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. In weariness, she looked down at the folder she was holding.

"Damn it," she muttered in annoyance, and began to stuff her duffel bag back into her locker...

...so she could trade it out for the science kit with her name on it, stacked against the back wall.


	2. First Impressions

The police were already assembled and entrenched outside the hotel as Sara pulled up to it. The flashing lights from their silent sirens added their own small element of ambiance to the background of Las Vegas. She opened the door after pulling up to the first available spot – without worrying how close she was or not – and slid out of the driver's side door. Rising before her in the sea of lights was a large hotel, with the neon sign flashing on it. She shook her head for a moment, already able to see how picturesque it was through the glass window that bordered what appeared to be the front lobby.

But no time for sight-seeing, she supposed. Best to get started and get this over with so she could go home and go to bed. Seizing the kit from the passenger's front seat, she slammed the door behind her. Checking to see that she had the keys on her, she locked it with the button press.

Straight ahead of her, she could see her favorite detective thus far speaking with one of the other officers. Jim Brass turned as her feet crunched on the ground beneath as she walked up to them.

"Ah, Sara...!" he said in what seemed like welcome.

"Hi," she replied with a formal smile. "What have we got."

"Well," sighed Brass, "one of the housekeepers here went up to the tenth floor to open the linen room to get something she forgot. And she noticed one of the doors was cracked open. She knocked, no answer... so she edged it open and saw a dead woman lying on the bed."

"Ooh," said Sara. "How wonderful."

"Yeah, a great start to a night shift," quipped Brass, "that's kinda what I thought, too. But anyway, she comes running down to the front desk and talks to the manager. That's him."

And he pointed in the direction of a tall man with light brown hair standing alone and looking around.

"Joel Hosting is the name," continued Brass. "A busy guy, by all accounts. Meaning his account and the housekeeper's, that is. He made the 9-1-1 call after checking in to make sure the lady wasn't going insane."

"Why, does the witness have a history of mental instability or something?" asked Sara.

She was half-kidding, but Brass answered it anyway: "Uh, nope. Nothing yet, not as far as we can tell. Poor woman looks real shaken up though. That would be her, over there."

Sara followed the new direction he pointed in to see a shorter woman standing in between some other officers, who were looking around uninterestedly – for a moment, Sara almost wondered if they ever did anything else at crime scenes; it's not like they were needed all THAT often for protection or the like. But she couldn't deny how shook up the housekeeper looked. Her eyes kept flitting around and she was shaking visibly.

"Nicky's up on the tenth floor, checking the room out." Brass pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "You can join him, or I'm just about to take statements. You might wanna get in on that, huh?" And he inclined his head to the side, as if to suggest she would be crazy to do anything but.

Which made Sara smile. "Sure thing. Let's do it, then. Who first?"

"I got a bad feeling about this manager guy," said Brass, after a moment of deliberation. "How's about checking him out first?"

"Sounds like a deal," said Sara.

And they walked up to the tall, brown-haired man first. As they approached, he jolted his head in their direction.

"A little jumpy?" asked Brass in his typical half-serious way. "Sight of a dead body will do that to you, I hear."

"Yeah," replied the man. "Yeah, you're telling me... This is a real first. How am I ever going to rent that room out to anybody again?"

"I don't know," replied Brass with a shrug, "but I'm sure you'll find a way. Anyhow, my name is Jim Brass. I'm a detective for the Las Vegas Police Department. This is Sara Sidle, she's with the crime lab. We'd like to ask you a few questions, starting with your name. What do ya say?"

"Uh... sure," answered the man. He crossed his arms over his chest and shivered. "Um... my name's Joel Hostings. I'm the night manager here."

Brass withdrew a small notebook from his shirt pocket and pulled the pen out of the loops on the top of it with precision. Sara couldn't help but admire it, as well as the speed with which he wrote down the man's name.

"I, uh... found the body," continued Mr. Hostings with a sniff. "Or, well, my housekeeper found the body. But she came and got me so... I called 9-1-1."

"About what time did you find the deceased?" asked Sara.

"Oh, God, um..." said Mr. Hostings, "...I'm gonna say around 11:00. Something like that. That would be when Janice came and got me. I remember because I was looking up at the clock and I yawned when I saw the time. Quite a ways to go before shift ends, you know? Night shift is demanding."

"Yeah, it sure is," remarked Brass. "But you say, 'Janice'? Is that the housekeeper?"

"Uhm, yeah, Janice is the one who found him. She's over there..."

"Okay, got it," said Brass. And he scribbled down more notes.

Sara twisted her head a little to the side and frowned with concentration – she couldn't read Brass' writing at all. She wondered if even he would be able to later on.

"And did you know the victim at all, Mr. Hostings?" rattled off Brass.

"Not personally, no," replied Mr. Hostings. "I mean, she's been staying here at the hotel for a few days now. But her bill's all paid up and she was supposed to leave tomorrow morning." He shrugged. "Other than that, I don't know a damn thing about her."

"Hmm... Well, we're gonna need to see a registration list, if you don't mind, sir," said Brass.

"Huh, what?" said Mr. Hostings. But then he shook his head. "Oh... yeah, yeah. I see what you mean, yeah. Sorry for the shakes, this is just–"

"–hey, don't worry about it," interrupted Brass. "We see this kind of stuff all the time, it's not exactly new to us. But the public doesn't and we get that."

"Gee, thanks," muttered Mr. Hostings.

"But, sir," said Sara, "if you need to talk to someone about it, there's a councilor right over there. Something to help you cope with it."

A look of unreadability crossed Mr. Hostings' frankly unattractive face. "No, I don't think I'm that far down the hill yet."

Brass waved a hand. "Hey, just checking. But if you'll wait here, I'll be back in a minute for that registration key, okay?"

"Sure, sure," agreed Mr. Hostings hastily. "Go ahead, take your time. It's not... it's not like we're going anywhere anytime soon..."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," said Brass. "Wait right here."

And with that, he stepped away from the jittery man with Sara close behind him. She couldn't help staring back at him a couple times more as they went...

"So, not the world's steadiest witness," commented Brass as they came to a stop.

"No kidding," said Sara. "Jumpier than a ferret."

"Are ferrets jumpy?"

Sara crinkled her lips thoughtfully for a second. "I don't know. I've never seen one, but I've heard they are."

"It's a nice expression anyway," said Brass. He raised his notebook and scribbled a couple more things in it. "Here, take a look."

Sara leaned over and saw that had added the sub-note "ferret" next to what looked like Mr. Hosting's name, in his curvy handwriting. She laughed at it, and Brass chuckled as well.

"Yeah, I like it," she said. "And the housekeeper? Have you talked to her at all yet?"

"Briefly," said Brass. "She seems like she's nicer than he is. Doesn't mean anything, per se, but..."

"Yeah," agreed Sara. "'But'..."

"Well," sighed Brass, "let's get this over with, then. I'm sure Nick's getting lonely up there."

Sara bit her lip, but couldn't stop the slight smile that formed. "Yeah, I bet he is."

As they stepped over to the shuddering housekeeper, a short sound of thunder went through the sky. Sara looked up to see dark clouds forming over them. Silently, she thanked Whoever was up there that their crime scene was inside.

"Mrs. Kenley?" came the voice of Brass. "Sorry about the wait."

"That's okay," was the woman's meek response. "Under the circumstances..."

"Indeed," said Brass. "'Under the circumstances'. But this is Sara Sidle. She's with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. She's gonna help us find out who did this."

"Good," sighed Mrs. Kenley. "Good, I... Mrs. Gorsha didn't deserve this."

"'Mrs. Gorsha'?" repeated Sara. "So, you knew the decedent?"

"Oh, so-to-speak," said Mrs. Kenley. "I spent some time with her while she was here. She's been for a few days, you know..."

"Yeah, that's what your manager told us," said Brass. "Said her bill was all paid up and everything."

"I wouldn't know anything about the bills," said Mrs. Kenley. "But Veronique was just staying for a few days. She was supposed to leave tomorrow."

Almost word-for-word what Mr. Hostings had told them. Sara wondered if Brass had caught it, too... The glance over his shoulder he was giving her suggested that he had.

"But when I went upstairs to the linen room – I forgot my lunch, you see – I saw there was an open door. On the tenth floor. I didn't recognize it as Mrs. Gorsha's room at first, but then I opened the door, and... and she was there, lying in all that blood..."

A single, more violent shudder ran through Mrs. Kenley and it took her a moment to calm herself down. Out of the corner of her eye, Sara could see Brass' usual impassive expression. But she couldn't help feeling at least a little sorry for the poor woman in front of them...

"And we, uh... well, that is to say, Mr. Hostings... he called 9-1-1 for help."

"Mm hmm," said Brass with a noncommittal nod. "Mm hmm."

Sara took a deep breath. "Mrs. Kenley, you said you opened the door, right?"

"That's right."

"Did you touch anything else in the room?" asked Sara.

Mrs. Kenley's eyes searched around a little. "Uh, no," she finally said. "No, I don't remember touching anything else. As soon as the door was open wide enough for me to see inside..."

"Alright, then," said Brass. "That's good! Good, you did the right thing."

Mrs. Kenley's small smile and incline of the head made Sara think she took Brass' comment as small comfort. Having known Brass for only a short while, Sara didn't feel she could really judge how caring Brass could be. Funny, to be sure... intelligent, good at his job. Lots of good things for a detective to be. But not caring.

Nevertheless, she tried to pose her next question with care. "Mrs. Kenley? Would you mind if... we stepped over there and took your fingerprints?"

"'Take' my fingerprints?" questioned Mrs. Kenly nervously.

"Well, what I mean is, we put some ink on your hands and you could just press your fingertips down on a sheet of paper for us. For me."

"Well... certainly, but why would you need that?"

"To rule you out as a suspect. While my partner and I are looking over the room, we'll want to be able to distinguish your fingerprints from the rest of the prints we find in there. Especially since you're a housekeeper – you've probably touched a lot of things in there before."

Mrs. Kenley took this into consideration for a moment. But she seemed to see the reasoning behind it, so she looked back to Sara and nodded hesitantly. "If it will help," she said.

Sara exhaled in relief. "Excellent," she said. "Great. If you'll just step over here, we an use the trunk of the car..."

It took a couple of tries to get Mrs. Kenley's prints done right. Or legibly, at least. She was shaking quite a bit, and Sara wondered if the prints would really be of any use once it was time to put them into practice.

But, they were successful enough in their endeavors. And like they had done with Mr. Hostings, Sara and Brass pointed to the nearby councilor. Unlike Mr. Hostings, Mrs. Kenley accepted.

"Great!" said Brass. "Great, then if you'll go with this officer here, he'll take you over and get you all set up..."

"Thank you," she said quietly, and went with the officer Brass had pointed out.

Brass turned to Sara after they had left. "So? Think she's better?"

"Um..." said Sara, crouching down to put the prints in her kit, "...I don't like her for it. I suppose it wouldn't be the first time the least likely suspect turned out to the be the perpetrator, though..."

"Well, you would know better than I, so..." And he looked over to the hotel room door. "I guess we better get started inside. I'll go get the registry with Mr. Hostings, you better find Nick before the solitude gets to him."

"I'm sure he's just fine," answered Sara with a resigned sigh. But she snapped the lid on her kit closed and headed for the door anyway.

"Hey!" called Brass.

She stopped and turned around to look at him. "Did I forget something?"

"Just to cheer up a little, huh? Keep your chin high, you'll do just great."

And he smiled what she liked to call "a New Jersey smile". One that she returned, and hoped he didn't notice it was with half the heart she could tell he had smiled with. As they turned and went their separate directions, another thunder rolled above. When it had faded, she blew upwards... both as a sign of irritation and hoping to get some of her curly hair out of her eyes.

The inside of the hotel was dark. Though there were dim lights in every corner of it, it gave off what some might call on ominous glow. To Sara, it felt comforting – a shadowy atmosphere was a serene one to me. Especially with the hum of the electric lights overhead... It all seemed quite peaceful to her. And she found the shadows cast by such lights interesting to look at, in an artistic sort of way. She grinned as she realized she reminded herself a little of Grissom. It was the type of thing he'd take interest in...

When she came off the elevator on the tenth floor, it was more or less the same. The coloring of the light was predominantly red on the main floor. On the tenth floor, there was something of a purple-ish hue to it. Purple not being her favorite color, she started to look past it at the décor beyond it. It wasn't exactly a fancy hotel by any means, but it was nice – clean, dust free, modest in appearance.

Ahead of her, the officer by the door where the yellow crime tape was spread across tipped his hat to her in a formality.

Right as she reached the door, though, someone else came out of it. She jumped back, expecting Nick, and her nostrils flared as she prepared to shout at him.

But it wasn't Nick.

"David?" she asked, somewhat surprised... "You're here already?"

"Mm hmm," he answered brightly. "Yep, I sure am. Not a busy night, so I'm on top of it."

Sara smiled. "You sure are... What have you got?"

"Blond female," said David. "Appears to have been stabbed. It looks like it was a quick way to die, though. Relatively painless, one could say."

Sara nodded. "Good," she said, and took a couple of deep breaths. "Good, that's always a good thing."

As they went by, she leaned herself back against the wall to allow them more room to get through the hallway.

"I'd say so," agreed David. "See you back at the lab, I hope."

"See you, David." But when he was gone she shook her head to herself – such a cute guy, but there was just no way...

She ducked beneath the crime scene tape to get a better look at the room. She noted right away that the door swung inward. So that was good – it would make it much easier to check it for Mrs. Kenley's prints. Or any prints, for that matter...

It seemed a small thing, but it was so encouraging to her that she knelt down and opened her kit to get started printing right away. But then...

"Hey!" she heard from across the room, and she looked up. A smile spread across her lips.

"When were you gonna say 'hello'?" asked Nick.


	3. Stick It Out

Nick ran his flashlight up and down her appraisingly as she stood up. She looked like hell, or as much as she possibly could, he figured... There were dark circles under her eyes, minimal amounts of makeup on, unusually messy hair, and one shoe was untied.

He angled the beam of his light down at that. "Were you in a hurry?" he asked, hoping he sounded casual enough.

"Huh?" she said. Her eyes followed the light down, where it illuminated her undone shoe laces. "Oh! Yeah, I was actually..." And she bent down to correct the issue. "Thanks for that."

"No problem. There's a lot of stairs in a hotel. Especially in a tall one like this." And he shined the beam back on the bed he was standing in front of. "Don't want you getting hurt..."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her smile up at him. The edges of his own lips twitched, but he kept a straight face in spite of it.

"Thanks," she said again, and cleared her throat. "So, what have you got?"

"A couple things to go on," he answered. "Some hairs from the bathtub, some blood in the sink... Oh! And the best part: a condom! A used one, too."

"Mmm," she said with mock enthusiasm. "Sounds tasty."

"Delicious indeed," said Nick. "But I was just looking over the bed around the victim when Super Dave showed up."

"Yeah, that was quick..." Sara commented.

He grinned. "I know. I heard you out there." And his grin grew a little wider. "'On top of it...'"

She rolled her eyes and went back to her kit. "Had to give him something, you know? Outright rejection, just not my thing."

Although he didn't see any point in saying anything out loud, Nick clicked his tongue and raised his eyebrows – which did not go unnoticed, judging by the look she gave him. But it was hard to imagine Sara as the shy and concerned type, whatever she may say... As he pulled the blankets back to look over the sheets, a sudden image of her raising one eyebrow at an attempt of David's to ask her out flashed through his mind. It made his grin a little wider still...

But he shook it away a second later. "I suppose... So, what are you looking for so hard?"

She withdrew a brush from her kit in one hand and a can of dust in the other. Her eyes were all over her work as she responded. "Prints," she said. "The housekeeper who opened the door gave me hers. I like her, I want to rule her out first."

Nick's grin returned for a moment. "You like her, huh?" He reached for his own kit. "The one who found the body, you mean?"

"That's right. Poor woman, working a late shift. Just going for some lunch and THIS is what she finds... Can you imagine it?"

"What, you mean can I imagine finding a dead body? Working as a homicide investigator?" he joked. "Why whatever do you mean...?"

"Smart ass."

He shrugged. "Well, you know..."

A silence fell while he ran the black light over the sheets. In spite of the used condom, there didn't seem to be any evidence of sexual activity on the bed...

The sound of plastic ripping came to his ear. He looked up to see Sara successfully lifting a fingerprint from the outside of the door.

"Looks like she was telling the truth," said Sara. She held the fingerprint card she had just collected up by what she had just collected. "These at least look like hers..."

"Good," said Nick. "Then maybe it wasn't her."

A strange object caught his eye. Or it seemed to be an object at first. But when he pulled the blankets back just a little more...

He blinked in surprise. "Hey, Sara?"

"Yeah?" She looked up inquisitively as she slid the newly collected fingerprints into an evidence bag and sealed it shut.

"Take a look at this."

Her footsteps were muffled by the carpet, but he could still hear the measured steps she was taking towards him. For a moment, her caution registered in his gut. And it ratcheted up when she came to a stop beside him and exclaimed.

"Wow! That's a lot of blood."

"Yeah," he remarked, reaching for a swab from his kit. "Yeah, that's just what I was thinking."

"You'd have to be drained of every last drop to leave that much behind."

"Mm." He slid the q-tip end over the blood and clicked the lid closed. "And take a look where it all is."

She twisted her head a little and squinted. Her finger began to trace the bed's pattern versus the blood he'd just found. He smiled again...

"It's all on the end of it," she said after a moment.

"That's right," he said. "But she wasn't lying on the end of the bed. She was up on the pillow, just like you normally would be."

"Define 'normal'," she challenged. "We're discussing the circumstances that could put a pool of blood on the end of a bed in a hotel room."

Oddly struck by the truth of this, he nodded. "Yeah. Our lives are weird..."

She nodded in quiet answer, and reached for the flashlight in her front pocket. He heard the light click as she turned it on, and saw the light reflect in the window over the heating grate next to him as she began to sweep over the room with the light.

He stood back up and looked around the room. The environment was unsettling in a way... but that probably had to do with the whole crime scene thing... If he hadn't just swabbed blood from a pool of it big enough to belong to a horse, he probably wouldn't have minded staying there. He jutted his lower lip out as he took another look around and tried to imagine it without the police tape and the LVPD vests he and his partner were wearing... It would probably be a comfortable place for the activities the night seemed to have started out with for the poor victim...

"Hey," came Sara's voice. "Did you see this?"

He looked over and saw she had come across some mail, or some white envelopes that sure looked like it. She thumbed through them.

"No, actually," he admitted. "I didn't."

She looked from the envelopes to him. "It's addressed to a 'Veronique Gorsha'."

He blinked and put on a puzzled expression.

She rolled her eyes playfully. "That's the name the housekeeper gave me for the victim. Brass is checking the registry."

"Yeah?" Nick pulled open the front pocket on his vest and stowed his flashlight back in it. "What else did the witnesses say?"

"Um... According to the night manager, the housekeeper's name is Janice Kenley."

"The one you liked," he interjected.

She eyed him with raised eyebrows and pursed lips. "Yes." She turned back to the table with a toothy smile. "The one I like."

He nodded once, and pat her on the back once before turning to go back to his kit. But before he could take a single step...

"I didn't like her manager much, though," she added to her earlier comments. "He had a bad attitude, and his 'shakes' routine seemed... really disingenuous."

Nick nodded. "Always the way it seems in a business situation, isn't it?"

She mimicked his earlier tongue clicking. "Something like that..."

He chuckled. "Okay, okay..." he said with the surrendering gesture of putting both hands up. "I see your point. Dead, sexy looking woman. Male manager, shaky as hell. Used condom full of semen. It looks pretty airtight."

"It does."

The weary tone of her voice caught his attention, just as he was reaching for his kit. He straightened up and furrowed his eyebrows as he studied her a little more closely. She was walking funny, one foot in front of the other instead of straight out. She yawned twice in the period of a few seconds. Her eyes were dim and unfocused. Her flashlight was wobbling with her mildly shaky hands. And all she was pointing it at was the table where the mail was sitting; the table he was sure had been thoroughly inspected enough now... What the hell was she doing here – what the hell was GRISSOM doing, sending her here – when she looked like she was about to fall over?

"Hey, Sara?"

She looked up with an expectant expression on her face.

"Hey... do you wanna, um..." he scratched the back of his head with one hand and gestured over his thumb with the other, "...go home?" he finished after a moment. "Lemme take this one? I promise, I'll put your name on the case file."

She frowned, puzzled.

"Well, it's just that you look tired enough to fall asleep in this pool of blood here, so..."

She laughed, in spite of how tired she looked. "No," she replied. "Thank you, Nicky. I'm just fine."

He put both hands on his hips and affixed her with an are-you-nuts look.

"I really am," she pressed.

It sound like she was trying to be reassuring. But the yawn belied her point.

"Uh huh..." he said.

She stamped one foot weakly, her lips turned upward. "Nick, really. I'm okay. Or..." She made a so-so gesture with her hand. "Maybe not, but I'm gonna stick it out with you anyway. You're lucky."

"Insanely," he acquiesced with a smile. "But I've just had a day off. I only woke up about two, er..." he checked his watch, "...three hours ago, after my last shift. I'm good for this one, if you wanna go get some rest. You look worn out."

"I shouldn't be," she argued. "Grissom's case kept me in the lab most of the day..."

He gave her that one with a nod. "But there's a difference between 'should be' and 'are'," he tried.

"What are you saying?" she said. "Are you trying to get rid of me?"

"No, no," he hurriedly answered. "No, it's not that at all. I just... you just look tired."

"Well... she began, and then yawned again, "I am. But I'll be fine. We'll get through this, huh?"

He sighed, and gave up. "As you wish..."

"That's better."

At that, he had to laugh...

"Now, let's see what else we can find and get it back to the lab," she said.

* * *

"How come I had to carry these?" asked Nick. He lifted the two boxes stacked in his arms as an indicator.

"Because you're a gentleman," Sara replied without a moment's hesitation. "What happened to that chivalrous attitude you were showing me back at the hotel?"

"It fell silent when you shot it down."

She prodded him sharply in the rib. "You said it yourself: you just had a day off."

He hauled them up and dropped them on the table.

"Besides, have you seen yourself in the mirror lately? A couple boxes aren't hurting you."

He tore open the top box with a rough yank. "Didn't I tell you to stop flirting with me?"

"Didn't I tell you it's my job to be observant?"

The implications caught up a few seconds later. He blinked at her, but she had already begun laying out evidence on the table, and didn't seem to notice.

"Okay, then," she said. "We've got fingerprints. Red hairs in the bathtub. Blood in the sink. Used condom and a semen sample from it. Priority mail addressed to the victim's room."

"Matched by the registry," added Nick.

She looked up from her clipboard.

He waved it in his other hand. "Brass sent it over."

She smiled and looked back at her checklist. "Fingerprints from the hotel room door. Blood collected by you, tricky Nicky, from the bed sheets. And our new items–"

"–courtesy of you, sunshine," he interrupted, rubbing his hands together. And as he named each item, he pointed it out. "Casts of markings made to the wall, tool undetermined. Two sets of fingerprints from the mail you found. Well done, darlin'!"

She extended a hand, which he took and held on to as she took a bow. "Thank you, thank you..."

He pulled her up straight with a chuckle. And after a moment... "And as the heroine of the hour, which of the following tasks sounds the least unpleasant to you? Sorting out the DNA for Greg or processing the rest? Including prints, which will be our job until Mandy gets here..."

"Oh, let's just do it all together." And she started to gather up the DNA evidence.

"Sounds like a plan."

They exchanged a brief sideways high five. Then Nick took the remaining DNA evidence and together they went across the hall to Greg, who looked somber and tired like Sara did.

"Hey, Greggo," greeted Sara. "Where's the tunes?"

"In the corner," he said, pointing in their direction.

Sitting on the table was a CD player, the music still on and up so loud that Nick could almost make the words out clearly from where he was.

"I was too tired to turn them off even," said Greg.

"You must've worn yourself out thrashing around like an idiot," said Sara.

She dumped the evidence bags she'd been holding on the desk in front of him. For some reason, she sounded bitter to Nick...

She continued, "It took me all of my last shift to get this tired."

"Tee hee," answered Greg. "What have you got?"

"Lots," said Nick. "Blood, hair and your favorite: sperm."

"Little soldiers," rephrased Greg, clearly not enthusiastic. "You guys like to keep it interesting."

"Get your ass out there on the field," said Sara. "It's not all it's cracked up to be."

"I seriously doubt it's as boring as testing tubes."

"Why'd you become a lab tech then?"

"What, weren't you guys lab techs first?"

Nick and Sara exchanged knowing grins. "No," said Nick. "I was a cop first."

At this, Sara inclined her head to the side. "What?"

"Yeah," said Nick. "I was a cop before I was a CSI."

"Really?" asked Greg. "What the hell made you want to go into the lab work? Some people might call that a downgrade."

"It's a legal demotion around here," added Sara with a shrug. "What's the deal?"

Nick sighed. "I don't know. I did it for three years, but I noticed the CSIs in the DPD and, uhm..." he jutted his lower lip out, "...I just wondered what it would be like. So I went into it. Stayed on the Dallas CSI team for a year and they said I could transfer if I wanted. So I picked Vegas."

Neither Sara nor Greg said anything for a moment. Sara looked down, thinking something funny judging by the look on her face.

"What?" he asked, suddenly feeling defensive.

"Nothing," she said, shaking her head. "It's just, I can really picture you in a cop uniform..."

"So can I. The uniform's still in my closet."

"Hmm." She brushed some of her hair out of her eye with one hand. "That might be something I'd like to see."

"Remind me the next time you're over watching the movie channels," he said, "and I'll get it out for you during the commercials."

"Yeah? Would you try it on?" The smile she flashed him...

...brought out one of his own. "You got it." And he made a bang-bang gesture at her.

"Alright, alright."

Nick jolted a bit – that's right, Greg was still there...

"Get out of here, I've got processing to do."

Hard as it was, Nick and Sara retreated, trying not to laugh at the shade of red Greg's face had turned as he'd rushed them out...


	4. Better Call Brass

The images on the screen flashed by too fast for him to follow. For a moment, it seemed funny to him that it was just a thing people knew and accepted in their lives – nobody really understood what a computer did or why, but they never really questioned it. They just worked with it, anyway.

After a series of clicks and some typing, the fingerprint analyzer came up. Setting on the desk beside his left hand was the fingerprint he had agreed to run: Janice Kenley's, the housekeeper's. A simple enough task, and one he was privately glad Sara'd given him.

Setting the ten card on the left scanner lens and the fingerprints Sara lifted from the door's surface on the right, he flicked the switch on and leaned back in the chair with his arms above his head to relax for what would probably be a grand total of thirty seconds. But while he did, he stared around the room at some of the things Mandy kept in what was mostly her workspace.

And what an intriguing girl she was. In the pictures sitting on the small shelves beneath the computer, he counted no less than six different men in the photos with her. Two of them seemed like they might be related, but no way of knowing for sure. In one picture, she looked like she'd just been snorkeling somewhere – she was coming up out of the water at least, and there was girly-looking blond guy with his arm around her shoulder. In another, she was dirty and in hiking clothes, with a walking stick elaborately decorated by feathers and some assorted leather attachments – the guy in this picture looked like he'd never even heard of a razor; the beard on his face went all the way down to where his belly button would be underneath his torn flannel shirt.

He covered his mouth to keep from bursting out laughing. He'd never really imagined what the other staff members of the lab did on their free time... All he knew was they seemed to have a lot more of it than the CSIs and the policemen. And Mandy sure seemed to know how to fill it up, it looked like...

The printer beeped. He looked at it and saw the warm papers it had just printed for him lying on its tray. With an upward flick of his eyebrows, he leaned forward in his chair to grab it, groaning like he was much older than he really was as he did so.

The fingerprints on the door and the ten card matched.

_Shocker_, he thought, half-hopefully and half-disappointed.

He looked over across the hall and spotted Sara immediately. She looked like she'd found something more exciting with her prints on the other computer. Exciting or discouraging, he couldn't tell... She was frowning down at the evidence in front of her, and lazily writing in the open notepad by her other hand.

He folded the printing results and slid them neatly into his front shirt pocket. Grabbing the evidence and its zip-lock bags up from the desk, he kicked back from the main printing computer desk with one leg and regained his balance on his feet with the other. The chair behind him slid into the wall and made a clanking sound. He hadn't meant for that and it made him jump.

Sara also looked up at the sudden sound. But when her eyes fell on him, she shook her head.

Feeling the blood rushing to his face in a blush, he glanced each way down the hall to make sure nobody else was around before joining Sara in the other computer room. "Sorry," he apologized when he entered the room. "I forgot how far them damn things slide."

"They're chairs on wheels," she said with an amused tone in her voice.

"I suppose they are, aren't they?"

She giggled and went back to writing in her notepad. "Did you find anything?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Nothing we didn't already know. The prints on the door are your friend's. She was telling the truth."

He brandished the piece of paper from his front pocket with a shake to unfold it. She took it between two fingers without looking up.

"Yeah. I told you she was innocent."

Nick cocked his head to the side. "Oh? And have you found anything to support your theory, oh high and mighty one?" he inquired with a playful bow of surrender.

"You did it for me. But don't be an ass. And no, not exactly," she said assertively when he opened his mouth to protest. She thrust the piece of paper underneath her notepad at him. "But take a look at this."

He took it from her, not entirely sure why he was being so careful about it...

But then the thunder rang loudly through the halls and caught him off guard. Startled by it, he jumped back a little at the same time as Sara looked up at the ceiling.

They looked at each other nervously for a moment. Sara's face fell a bit, and she slammed her notepad closed and flung the pen down on the desk. Her hands came up to her face, which she rubbed slowly.

"Don't like the rain, huh?" he asked quietly.

"No," she answered just as quietly. "I mean, I don't mind it, but... not when we have a scene to worry about."

"Our scene's inside a building," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but still, it's just... one more thing." And she hunched on one elbow against the table.

He furrowed his eyebrows and leaned his head to the side. "Are you all right?"

She didn't answer with words... or not his question, anyway... electing instead to look up at him with half-closed eyes and a half-open mouth. "Read the print results."

Deciding not to push it at the moment, he blinked prominently a couple of times and raised the printout she had given him up to his eyes. "The first prints come back to a... 'Jackie Joplin'. And she had a 'legal sex change'?"

He looked up at Sara with his mouth half-dropped. She shrugged back at him.

"Yep." She snatched the paper out of his hand and handed him another one. "I don't know what that's about, but the other prints came back unknown."

A brief look over of the second sheet confirmed as much.

"At least we got an I.D. on someone who was there," he said.

"Yeah," agreed Sara, clearly trying and failing to stifle her laughter. "Yeah, we sure did..."

Her laughter was contagious. When she couldn't keep it all the way in anymore, he laughed a little with her.

"I hope Greg has something good for us," he said after a few moments.

Sara nodded. "Oh, I'm sure he does."

"I'm sure he does, too," said Greg.

They turned and saw him leaning against the door frame, looking at them excitedly, with his goofy looking hair and his ridiculous sense of dress visible underneath his open lab coat.

"If you'll follow me," he continued, "I can take you away on the Magical Mystery Tour."

"Ooh," moaned Sara. "Please, no more Mystery Tours..."

"Oh, come on," said Nick.

As she rose from her stool, she took his hand and held onto it as they followed their dorky DNA master into his lair of tubes, tinctures and hard rock.

"Okay, so..." began Greg, "here's what we got. Those red hairs you found in the bathtub are a match to your housekeeper, Janice Kenley."

"Okay," said Sara. "She cleans there. I'm sure the bathtub is on her list."

"Me, too," agreed Greg. Next he threw down the blood sample. "Someone named Jackie Joplin was bleeding all over your crime scene. The sink, specifically, and he/she's had a legal sex change."

Nick looked thoughtfully down at Greg's blood results and Sara's print results. "Sara found him or her there, too..."

"And she was bleeding," said Sara. "A lot. Or else she couldn't have left all that blood in the sink."

"She wasn't the primary blood donor there, though," interjected Greg. "I give you: semen. From a used condom found in a bed by a dead woman... who used to be a man, who used to be a– whatever." And down on the table plopped the semen sample, beside the hairs and the blood. "It comes back unknown. Obviously male, but the weird part is the second blood swab also comes back male."

"So, maybe there was a real struggle, then," suggested Sara, hopefulness evident in her voice. "Maybe she got a part of her attacker when he came in to kill her!"

"I don't know, but I doubt it," said Greg. "The blood from the bed sheets matches the semen from the condom."

Nick felt Sara looking at him... even saw her in the corner of his eye for a moment, as the gross implications of what may have gone down in such a situation settled into their brains.

But like with most of the gross things they encountered in their work, it never felt complete until somebody said it. "So..." he started, intending to play that part, "...what we're saying here is the same man who killed a woman who was born another man... had sex with him or her first..."

"Looks about right," answered Greg.

For a moment, nobody said anything. Just listened to the light tapping of the rain falling down on the buildings ceilings, walls and windows. Sara stared down at the evidence Greg had just analyzed for them, and Nick wondered if she was thinking the same thing he was: _Wish I'd never asked..._

His pager sounded then. He sighed, and pulled it off his hip.

"Doc Robbins," he said after looking at it.

Sara took the evidence bags off of Greg's desk.

"Good luck," dorky bid them in sarcasm.

But neither of them paid him any attention. Nick pushed the door open for Sara with his shoulder and ran his fingers through his hair.

"Wow," was all he could say.

"Yeah," agreed Sara. "Wow... I can't wait to see the autopsy results on this one. I bet they'll be fascinating..."

"I know," said Nick. "Wanna bet me breakfast that Doc found a live animal or something in her stomach?"

She giggled, but shook her head. "No, thanks. I'll just let you buy me breakfast."

His eyes had gone down to his pager, but they shot up again as her quip registered. He smiled...

"After we talk to Brass," he said. "I think I'll have him run down the name, Jackie Joplin. See what he comes up with. And maybe... and I really do hate to say this, but maybe have him look up Janice Kenley's address?"

For a second, it looked like she was going to argue. But he wondered if he just imagined it...

...because all that came out of her mouth was, "Yeah, probably better. I guess there were too many hairs in the sink for a regular hotel housekeeping routine."

He nodded his agreement and reached for his cell phone.

"Shall we split up?" she asked, just as it came up to his ear.

He deliberated for a moment, but not a very long one. Flipping his phone shut, he shook his head and stuffed it back in his pocket.

"Nah," he said. "You stuck by me, I'll stick by you. The least I can do is stay close enough to catch you if you start to fall over."

She laughed. "Wow, Nick. Who could ask for anything more?"

He shrugged. "I can think of a few people who might rather catch up on their sleep, but it could just be me, I suppose... But I'm betting it's not."

Although she was grinning back at him, she sighed, as if to give up and went with him down the hall.

It wasn't until the elevator doors closed behind them that he realized they hadn't let go of each other's hand...

* * *

"I'm here to tell you right now, this is going to be an interesting one," said Doc.

He stood across the table from them with his hands folded in front of him like they usually were, and his cane balanced on one end of the autopsy table.

"Yeah, it looks like it," said Sara. "You should see what Greg turned up."

"Uh..." sighed Doc, "no thanks. I'll leave the DNA evidence to DNA."

Nick nodded. "Sounds like a plan. What can you tell us about our victim, here?"

"Quite a bit. For starters, the name of this fine-looking transsexual is Jackie Joplin."

Nick exchanged a look with Sara.

"Wait a minute," she said. "Jackie Joplin is the victim?"

"That's right," said Doc. "Formerly Jack Joplin."

"How creative," Nick joked.

Sara batted her eyebrows up and sighed.

And Doc shrugged. "I wouldn't know. Being a mortician is one of the least creative jobs in the world. It's one of the reasons why I went into it. But it appears that Miss Joplin here had a very rough life, in any case. She or... he... whatever, was born in 1977. On the of 23rd of March, to be exact. So, she was only twenty-three-years-old."

"As of two days ago," said Sara.

The subdued tone of her voice caused Nick to look over at her. She was running her gloved fingers over some bruises on the victim's arms.

Doc noticed it, too. "I was just getting to that," he said, calmly. "I think she was the victim of long term domestic abuse. I pulled up her medical records, and there were at least a dozen visits to the hospital last month... And as you can see, she was bruised. Her x-rays showed some healing fractures, as well. I'd say this girl suffered pretty much regularly."

Sara sighed a resigned sigh and reached for the camera sitting on one of the side tables. But seeing how stony her face had gone, and how shaky her hands were, Nick took it gingerly from her.

"Lemme do that," he offered.

She didn't answer. Just nodded and surrendered the camera. Doc's eyes flickered back and forth between them as he took the picture.

"Her cause of death was by a basic stab wound. At least she... didn't have to suffer that for very long. Whoever did it pierced a couple of vitals. Her death would have been near instantaneous."

Sara seemed encouraged by this – she nodded vigorously, in any case. "That's good."

"Yes, it is," agreed Doc. "Fortunately for us, her liver wasn't one of them. I got a temp from it, suggesting she died at around eleven this evening."

"Hmm," said Nick. "That's about fifteen minutes or so before dispatch received the call."

"Which means she died not long before the housekeeper found her," said Sara. "I'm starting to not like her so much..."

"I'm pretty sure the housekeeper didn't do this," said Doc. "No offense to the female present, but this kind of damage looks like it was done by a man. The severity of it just isn't seen in victims killed by women. That... and the sexual assault kit suggests rough intercourse shortly before she died. Which means that–"

"–which means that, unless we're dealing with a case of a lesbian gone wild... there had to be a man present sometime shortly before she died," interrupted Nick. "And it was... probably rape."

Sara glanced at the clock, and snorted. "Yeah... And whoever he is, he's probably feeling real good right about now. It's only 1:30 in the morning..."

"Nothing like a little rape and murder to brighten your day, I always heard..." said Nick sarcastically.

"There's more," said Doc. He handed Sara a card with some green writing on it. "She was heavily inebriated before she died, too. So, in the best case possible scenario, she may have just liked it rough and been really, really drunk."

The way Sara's eyes – not her eyelids, but her pupils – seemed to narrow a bit not only scared Nick a little, but suggested to him that she didn't buy this at all. And he didn't really, either...

"And," continued Doc, "there was something in her pocket."

Nick held a hand out and Doc deposited something heavy, and cold enough that he could feel it through his gloves. In the dim lighting of the autopsy room, by moving it around a little, he could see it was small wrench of some kind.

"A wrench?" he asked tentatively.

"That's what I think," replied Doc. "I have no idea why, but there was a wrench in her back pocket."

Nick exhaled a weary breath and accepted an evidence bag from Sara. "All right, we'll take it back up to the lab. Maybe there'll be some more prints on it. Do you have the victim's fingerprints and DNA?"

"Sure," said Doc. He handed over the ten card and the DNA swab. "And if you think of anything else you think I can help you with, don't hesitate to stop by again."

"Will do," said Nick, accepting them from him.

"Thanks, Doc," added Sara.

"Certainly."

And with that, they turned for the exit.

Out in the hall, Sara clawed a large chunk of her apron in each hand and pulled it off over her head with surprising speed. The plastic hamper cover smacked against the rest of it loudly as she operated the foot pedal equally as quickly.

"We'd better call Brass," she muttered. "The sooner we get our requests in, the sooner they'll be done. You wanna do that, or shall I?"

Nick made a calm-down gesture with one hand. "I got it. And think it's time for a coffee break."

"No, no," she protested.

But as she did, a lengthy yawn escaped her mouth, bringing an expression of skepticism to his face.

"Mm hmm. Coffee break."

And this time he would have no argument. Rather because she was too tired to argue or because she'd seen the sense in his words, he didn't know, but she fell silent with a couple of blinks. He doubted it was the latter, but he indicated the elevator a short way down the hall after dumping his own apron into the hamper.

"I'll join you as soon as I call Brass," he said. "You're right, the quicker we get the order in, the quicker he delivers our meals."

At his analogy, she smiled, and ran a hand through her hair. "Is that a Southern thing?"

"What d'ya mean?" he asked as they started walking.

"The need to find a different way of wording everything," she explained. "Do all Southerners do that, or is it just a charming Nick Stokes original?"

He thumped his chest lightly one time and made a thumbs up at her. "It's all Nick Stokes, baby!"

She laughed, and gripped on to his arm again as they walked.

"Good to know..." he heard her say, just as the elevator stopped on their floor, and the door opened.


	5. Coffee Break

"This is Brass."

"Hey... Jim, it's Nick."

"What's up?"

"Yeah, hey... I need you to check in to some names that have come up."

"Oh, yeah? Who am I looking for?"

"Well, it looks like our housekeeper has some 'splainin' to do," said Nick. "Her red hairs were in the sink."

"Her RED hairs?" asked Brass. "Our housekeeper was a blond. Like the victim."

Nick scratched the back of his neck. "Is that so...? Sounds like she has even more to tell us than we thought."

"Apparently," said Brass.

And Nick could hear the scratching on his notepad, even through the phone.

"Who else am I looking for?" continued Brass. "You said 'names'..."

"Yeah," confirmed Nick, and he looked down at his own notepad. "The other one is Jackie Joplin. She's the victim, so I know where she is. But she had a legal sex change, so I'm wondering where she came from, what she did for a living... you know, who she was before."

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. And then, "You mean, back when she was a 'he'?" quipped Brass.

Nick smiled. "Something like that. Can you do that for me?"

"I sure can, Nicky. I'll give you a call when something comes up."

"Okay. See you later, Jim."

"Later."

Nick clicked his phone shut... and just at that moment, a roar of thunder sounded, causing him to jump a little. He shook his head a second or two after it had faded and headed for the break room...

When he got there, he leaned against the door frame. There was Sara, at the end of the table, with the case file in the hand that wasn't occupied by the cup of coffee. He shook his head and entered the room.

"You know... the point of taking a break is to take a break, sunshine."

She looked up when he slid the folder away from her with his middle finger. Again, she looked like she wanted to argue, but didn't.

Instead, she rubbed one of her eyes. "What'd you find out from Brass?" she asked.

Nick pressed his lips together tightly, trying to hide a smile. "I only just called him seconds ago, sweetheart. It's gonna take some time."

"Oh, that's right..."

He shook his head, half-playfully, and crossed the room to get some coffee for himself. All there was was a straight-up pot of classic roast, rather than his favorite, Columbia. Strike one. And strike two was that the creamer was gone. He inclined his head to the side, as if to say guess-I'm-having-it-black without actually saying it...

"Sorry," apologized Sara. "I used the last of the creamer."

He looked back at her and shrugged it off, literally. "Not a problem. Really. Black coffee's better than no coffee."

"This is true," she giggled.

He took a seat catty-cornered to her. "I can tell you this much: Brass is on it. He's lookin' into Janice Kenley AND Jackie Joplin. And hey, how come you never mentioned Janice Kenley was blond?"

Sara took a long drink from her coffee. "I don't know. I didn't even remember she was..."

She combed her fingers through her hair for a few moments, staring into her coffee.

While he stared at her. "Are you absolutely sure you really wanna do this? You could just go home, you know?"

She let her hand thud lightly on the table. "Nick, stop it. I'm not going home."

"I promise, Sara, I'll cover for you and everything," he tried. "I'm not tryin' to get rid of you, I'm really not. I think you've been an excellent addition to the team."

At this, she raised her eyebrows, and her gaze at him became more focused.

"I do," he reaffirmed. "I think it's so cool, what you did for all of us, when Holly got shot. But you're gonna burn out if you keep up like this, you know? You gotta rest when you gotta rest."

Her expression softened before she answered. "Thank you, Nicky. Really. But I've been doing this job for a while, and... I know what it takes."

He drummed his fingers on the side of his coffee mug. "Yeah... I suppose so." He paused for a moment, and took a sip. And then: "I just... don't want you to get too sick of it, you know? And quit... This job kicks your ass at times."

She leaned on the palm of one hand and looked up. "I know that, too. But it's easier to take an ass kicking when I've got you watching my back."

He cocked his head to the side. "Well, thank you."

"Thank YOU," she answered. But then her tone turned bitter. "I couldn't have done this with Catherine or Warrick... or Grissom."

He took a short breath and another drink from his coffee. "Yeah, I know what you mean. They're great, but they're not always very understanding."

"That's your Texas gentleman talking again," she said. "They can be downright terrible to work with."

He surrendered that one with a pointing gesture. "And that works, too. But you'll get used to it, I promise. They're tight, the three of them are. I was already a CSI when I got here, and Warrick was still a trainee. The best trainee we had before or since, but still... It wasn't unusual for them to all end up at the same lunch table together."

She smiled at this, and picked at the edge of the table. "Are you trying to tell me you know what it's like?"

"Something like, yeah."

Although she looked accepting, she fell quiet, and continued to pick at the table. Seeing her dumbfounded expression, he patted her forearm once and took her empty coffee mug for her. The digital clock on the other end of the table said it was getting close to two in the morning.

"In the meantime, I got your back," he added, and set their mugs down in the sink. His was still half-full of coffee...

"I know," she replied. As she stood up, she stretched her arms up. "And thanks."

"Sure thing, sunshine."

He followed her out of the break room and down the hall into the lab. She seemed to walk a little more briskly than she had coming off the elevator from the morgue. She started humming something, and he bit his tongue in amusement. It was something she always did when she felt better.

_Mission accomplished_, he told himself in his mind. And his amused expression became a full-fledged smile...

* * *

The wrench clanged loudly down on the table as Sara dumped it out of its box, even though it was inside a sealed plastic evidence bag.

She winced at it, and heard Nick's teeth grit beside her. "Sorry," she apologized.

He waved it off. "That's okay, there, sunshine. What do we have?"

She shuffled through some of the items until she found what she was looking for: the evidence logbook for their case number. "Um... you want the new evidence, or...?"

"Yeah," he confirmed. "Yeah, the new evidence, what do we got?"

She took a deep breath. "The photo of the bruises on the victim," she read off. "The handheld wrench from the victim's pocket. And the victim's fingerprints and DNA."

He slid the items around on the table this way and that for a few moments. As each second passed, the furrow of his brow in annoyance became more and more pronounced. Until finally, she edged it right out from under him with her pinky finger and a smirk.

"Try this," she offered.

"Thank you," he said shortly. "You want to look at the wrench?"

"Sure," she replied, thoroughly entertained by his annoyance.

He took the photo over to the microscope to study with a snappy motion in his step. She watched him go with a single, whispered laugh.

Visible right away was the dried blood on the wrench. She hoisted her heavy kit off the stool and it thumped down beside the wrench. She glanced over at Nick, but he seemed too absorbed in his work to notice this time. Smiling, she snapped open the lid for fresh swabs and a solution in a drop bottle that would re-moisten the blood without compromising it as evidence. But in the process of collecting it, the light reflected off the handle in just the right way... And a fingerprint jumped out of the blood at her like a sore thumb.

"Hey, Sara, are you done with that wrench?" asked Nick, a couple minutes later.

"Sure am," she said. "I got blood off of it, and a fingerprint out of the blood. Why?"

"Because I think I might have something, too..."

She dropped her lifted print into the empty evidence bag and zipped the top closed. "Alright, just a a moment."

She tossed her two new finds onto the pile and took the wrench and its bag across the room to Nick. There was an open book next to him, a ring binder. In it, she could see several different bruise pattern examples highlighted in laminated photos. She could tell which one he was looking at right away.

"I went through this exemplary," he started to explain, "...and I think I got a visual match. It's–"

"–this one," she interrupted, pointing to the one in the top left corner on the first page he was looking at.

"Why do you have to do that?" he questioned cheekily. "Anyway, I want to see if the wrench matches up."

She handed it to him, and watched over his shoulder while he went to set it down on the photo...

Suddenly, Brass came storming in. "Hey! Nick, Sara... We found Janice Kenley's address."

They looked at each other.

* * *

The rain was really coming down. The tapping on the exterior of their Denali was loud enough that she thought she might have to cover her ears for the reverberation effect it was having in her head.

"Stokes, Sidle, don't get too close to the situation until we know what's going on. My men are telling me there's no signs of activity at the Kenley residence."

"Okay, copy that," replied Nick into the radio. "I can hardly wait," he then told Sara.

"I know," she agreed. "It says here that she has a husband and three children. I'd love to compare that husband's DNA to some of our unknowns..."

Nick grinned. "I don't think Greg wants anymore work to do."

"Tough."

They rounded the corner onto the street listed for the Kenleys' house. It seemed unusually dark, even for a Vegas suburb neighborhood. She shivered a little as she noted some of the ominous-looking homes. Ahead of them, the officers pulled into one of the driveways. There was only one other car there...

Nick twisted the key in theirs to disengage the engine. "I don't know about you, but I'm not going out in the rain until I have to."

"Nope," she said.

But she was watching the policemen approaching the dark house of their suspect in a wide group.

"It seems a little much for a suburban residence," commented Nick from beside her. "Don't you think?"

"I would if their house didn't look like the central set piece from a horror movie."

He laughed.

A couple seconds later, Brass appeared from the driver's seat of the squad car he was driving and waved them out. Sara shoved hard on the heavy door to get it open and splashed out into the rain.

"I got the kits," she heard Nick's slightly raised voice through the heavy rainfall.

She nodded in acknowledgment and went to join Brass by the front porch.

"A real gentleman you got, there," he remarked.

"Yeah."

Nick came running up onto the porch and shook a little, reminding her of a wet dog. She bit down on her bottom lip to stifle a giggle.

"Hate this kinda weather," said Nick.

"Ah, we really needed it," replied Brass. "Even in Vegas, we gotta have water." And then he gestured to the swung open front door. "All yours, you two."

Nick stepped in first, his boots making very slow footfalls that echoed thunderously in the very old-looking house's halls. As she followed close behind him, she felt almost tempted to take off her own shoes. But the way the place looked as she shined her flashlight around it immediately resolved that temptation.

"Oh, my God," she said. "What the hell happened here?"

"I don't know," came Nick's husky answer in the dark. "But something bad, it looks like."

She nodded her agreement. Then something caught her eye...

And she gripped the back of his coat. "Wait, stop!" she exclaimed. "You almost stepped in it."

He looked down, and in the dim lighting, it was apparent that he'd seen it, too. All the blood lying in a pool, gathering in a slight dent in the floor right in front of him.

"Thanks," he said. "These are my best work boots."

She smiled as she rested her chin on his shoulder, and followed the trail of blood with her flashlight up the hall from the pool.

The floor seemed to lay at an angle. And the blood running along it was coming from what looked like a closet, built beneath the stairs that were to their left. They each sighed in resignation with each other for a moment before stepping forward, carefully navigating the blood pooling between them and the closet door...

Nick applied a pair of gloves before opening it. The snapping sound they made echoed even louder than his heavy-thudded footfalls had. He reached out with a slightly-trembling hand to open the door...

"Oh my God," she said, and turned away from the sight before them.

And Nick just sighed, sharply...

There was a red headed woman inside of it, slumped down against the wall and left sitting in a pool of her own blood.

Sara ducked her head into the back of Nick's shoulder and shook it.

"Oh, good God..." was all he said.


	6. A Witness Still Lives

"Hey," said Brass. "Got a minute?"

Sara looked up from the blood on the floor she was swabbing. "Yeah."

"Sure," Nick chimed in.

"I, uh... I called Greg to find out how he was doing with that evidence you left him. He's still working on it, but Mandy finally arrived. I had her run those prints we got from the blond woman at the hotel through the system."

"The one posing as Janice Kenley?" said Sara bitterly.

"Yeah, that would be it," confirmed Brass. "And she came up as an unknown. Since the real Janice Kenley was a nurse, she was in the system."

"And... that woman we found in the closet's a redhead..." said Nick, regret in his voice "And she was in a nurse's outfit, too."

Brass nodded, and his eyes fell to the floor. "So... I think we found Janice Kenley then."

Nick also nodded. "Yeah. But we'll run her DNA through the system when we get back. Just to be sure..."

"Okay. But there's more," said Brass. "That second set of prints you got off the mail, Sara?"

She deliberated for a moment. "The envelopes in the hotel room?"

"Yeah, those," said Brass. "I had Mandy run them, too. They're also an unknown, but they're a match to the blond woman's unknown prints."

Sara looked at Nick, and he shook his head back at her. "So, she lied to us," he said.

"Yeah," answered Sara. "She lied to ME..."

"And me," added Brass. "I thought she was innocent."

Sara couldn't help wondering if he was just making that up because he could see she was upset by it. But even if he did, it was an effort to be nice to her, all the same. So it brought out a smile on her face. Yes, she had definitely been blessed to have Brass and tricky Nicky to help her on this case...

"But, we do know that the red hairs at the hotel that we found belong to Janice Kenley," Nick thought out loud. "So, what, does that mean the hairs were planted there?"

"There's a good possibility," said Brass.

Sara clicked the lid closed on the blood swab she had just collected. Nick's theory sounded like a good one, it really did. But it also suggested a few things they couldn't know for sure. Like that the victim was known to either the blond woman who'd lied to them, or the unknown male whose semen had been left behind in his used condom. And what about Janice Kenley's husband? Where was he at? Proximity searches had turned up nothing in the last half-hour. Not a long period of time, but time enough that if he was anywhere nearby, they should have found him by then. And putting a BOLO out on his vehicle, or even he himself, was no good because they had no clue what he looked like or if he even had a car with him.

And the other question she just couldn't get out of her mind was... _Where are the children at?_

"What've you got so far here?" inquired Brass.

Nick reached for their sealed evidence bags. "Not a whole lot, given all the destruction and chaos. There's a lot of blood, but it's all coming from the same body: Janice Kenley's. And David just pronounced, so she'll be gone in a minute."

"Actually, she'll be gone right now," said David. "Hi, Sara."

Sara turned and flashed him a formal smile in answer. Then she turned back to Nick, waiting for him to continue. He seemed to have hesitated a bit...

He blinked twice before going on. "Uh... yeah. So, anyway... we got the bottle of blond colored hair dye, and some fingerprints off that. Then there's the blood sample from the trail in the hallway that Sara over there is collecting," –she turned and looked over her shoulder just in time to see him wink at her; she smiled, and sighed tiredly– "and– hey, watch the door, Super Dave."

The loud clanking of the thin metal rods from David's bed for carrying the bodies out caused Sara to jolt. She looked from Nick to David, over by the door, with a feeling of great annoyance for a moment, before urging Nick to continue with an impatient gesture of her hand.

"Hold your horses, there, Sara," he said offhandedly. And then to Brass: "There was also some blood on one of the couch cushions. Someone tried to hide it, though."

"Lemme guess," interjected Brass. "Tried to hide it by flipping the cushion over."

"Good guess," replied Nick with a smile. "Anyway... there was also another one of them handheld wrenches, also in this victim's pocket. And some kind of biological fluid on the living room rug. No condom this time, but can't quite rule out semen."

"Whatcha thinkin', a serial in the making?" said Brass.

"No idea," said Nick. "I just know, whoever the hell he is, I hate his guts."

Sara bit her lip. "Any sign of the kids?" she asked Brass.

He took a moment to answer. "No. But I got them all over it. We'll find 'em."

She nodded, surprised at how confident she actually felt about it.

"Meantime, keep lookin' here," said Brass. "I'm gonna go check up on my guys. See if they got anything on the first victim's name yet..."

"Okay," said Nick, as Brass turned and walked out.

For a moment, there was almost total silence as Nick disappeared around the corner, making no more sounds that his shoes clicking on the hard wood floor. Sara stood up from her kneeling position and sealed her blood swab in an evidence bag.

"Yep. Nothing..." came Nick's voice from some other room.

She frowned, puzzled. "What?"

And he reappeared in the doorway he had gone out through. "There's no more damage in the downstairs area. I'd say whatever happened, it happened in here."

She stepped over to the closet. "Yep. Right here, to be more specific." She hunched down underneath the coats hanging from the closet bar. "Maybe..."

The sound of his footsteps told her he'd come up behind her. "'Maybe...' what?" he said.

"I don't know, the back of a closet, it just... seems like the perfect place we might find something," she remarked, sliding boots and coat tails around this way and that.

Until she saw it... and picked it up carefully from the very back corner it lay in. A satisfied smirk crossed her face.

"Like this?" she said, and turned around to show it to him.

He squinted at it in the shadowy environment for a moment, before appearing to remember his flashlight. When he shined it on the yellow, circular object she was holding, his eyebrows raised as if to ask a question without using any words.

"A plate...?"

"Sure looks like it," she said, and spun it around a couple of times. "There's something red on it. Look out, I'm gonna test for blood..."

"Whoa, there," he said. "That's not blood. It's food."

She stopped, and took a closer look at it. Or a longer look, rather... And then, with Grissom's strange methods in mind, she took a sniff.

"Spaghetti?" she suggested, incredulously.

"Yeah, from the looks... Here..." He took it from her in one hand and traded out his flashlight to her in his other. "Could I have some light? I'll print it..."

She aimed both lights down at one of the kits on the floor. He knelt down into the view created by the beam and checked a couple of labels on the clinking glass bottles.

"Mandy's gonna hate us as much as Greg by the time this one's over..." said Nick.

Sara shrugged, definitely not concerned how Mandy or Greg felt. "Such is life, and life on this job."

Nick grinned up at her for a moment. "How very caring of you, sunshine."

"Just print the damn plate," she replied with a roll of her eyes.

"Okay, okay," he said.

And he did. Producing some beautifully complete prints on the backside of it. Except for one thing... Sara frowned inquisitively at them.

"These are awful small," commented Nick, turning the lifts between his fingers. "They probably... belong to a child."

She swallowed the building lump in her throat at his words. But her voice still came out shaky. "Yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right." She ran the lights slowly up the banister of the staircase. "If we're going to find any evidence of kids... I bet the upstairs is the place to look."

He stood up after bagging the plate and the prints and accepted his light back from her with a pointing gesture. "Hang on to me. It's dark in here."

"I can handle it," she protested falsely, and took his arm that he held out for her oh so chivalrously anyway.

The stairs were creaky, no matter where she put her foot as they ascended them slowly. And Nick's help did end up coming in handy when, at the top of the stairs, she stepped on his toes and almost slipped.

"Gotcha!" he exclaimed, a look of triumph adorning his lips.

She shook her head; it was so easy to amuse his sometimes-child-like mind... "Thanks," she said.

He took his hat off in a playful bow. "You're quite welcome, sweetheart. Now come on, this way..."

She followed behind him with a watchful eye. Everywhere he shined his flashlight, she shined it somewhere else. They couldn't turn the light on, yet... They'd risk ruining the scene's natural setting. And that might put some of the evidence in a bad context. Which Grissom would have both of their heads for. She giggled at the thought of the look on his face. And the irony of how they had more than once discovered heads that had left their owner's bodies.

"What?" said Nick, a step ahead of her.

"Grissom," she replied simply.

"Yeah? What about him?"

"Oh, nothing..." she said. "I was just thinking about what he'd say if we turned the lights on too soon."

"He'd be pissed," agreed Nick. "But why is that funny."

She paused for a second, trying to think of the right words to say... "Oh... I'll... tell you later. Watch out for the wall."

He side-stepped a chunk of wall that had suddenly jutted out as the hallway turned a little. She followed him around it with a sigh of amusement.

"It's a shame, you know?" said Nick, all of a sudden. "The real Janice Kenley probably had no idea what happened..."

She nodded her agreement. "Yeah. That's what's getting to me, almost as much as the kids."

"And the way the kids are gonna feel when they find out about... about..."

"...this," she finished for him. An expert, always, at finding another way to say the things she didn't want to...

"Yeah..."

For a moment, it seemed like there was nothing more to be gained from the house. Not even a drop of blood on the walls or floors. At least not as far as she could see. Even in the dim lighting, she could see Nick's eyebrows were furrowing in that endearingly-cute way they did whenever he was irritated by something.

"Aahh," he groaned in frustration. "Nothing."

She patted his shoulder twice as they went. It seemed like a rather long hallway, she thought... for such a small house. And they'd yet to come across a door. Maybe the upstairs didn't have any rooms? Or maybe they'd done some remodeling recently, and had them all removed? She tried to think back to the outside view. It had been hard to make out in the thundery atmosphere, but it didn't seem to have been altered at all recently... And there were no signs of construction from where they were on the inside, either.

It was as they rounded the next corner, and another flash of lightning briefly brightened their surroundings that they saw it: a door cracked open, with a light thudding sound from the other side...

Ahead of her, Nick reached out an arm behind himself and pulled her up against his back.

"Careful," he whispered. "I'll go first."

She moved a hand to the side of her hip. Where the service pistol sat in its holster. Lifting it slightly out of its pouch, she clicked the safety off. At the sound of it, Nick's head twitched back at her for a short moment...

At the door itself, there was a moment of hesitation. At first, she thought Nick was just worried, but then she noticed his eyes frantically moving as he stared in through the crack. Then she realized, he was trying to see as much as he could with the shadows through the opening. But all she saw were tree limbs on a light blue colored wall, becoming more exaggerated each time the lightning flashed... Which was now happening every couple of seconds.

Apparently, Nick didn't see anything either. Because he suddenly burst through the door with his elbow and whipped his own pistol out of its holder, clicking the safety off while he spun to the side to give Sara a clear shot, and aiming it around the room the immediate second that he was facing forward again at whatever might be in there.

Which turned out, moments later, to be nothing.

Except two more bodies, against the back left corner, on one of the beds.

At her side, Nick registered it first. He slowly lowered his pistol, and his mouth dropped opened as he sighed another regretful sigh. And when she followed his gaze over to where the two bodies lay, she mirrored his actions almost to the letter.

It was a young girl and an older woman, both on the bed. Although the girl was propped up against the wooden headboard with her head slumped to the side, the woman was lying on her side with a hand out in the girl's direction.

When yet another flash of lightning lit up the room, Sara started, and took several brisk steps forward.

"Sara?" came Nick's voice, sounding slightly alarmed.

No. It couldn't be...

But when she reached the bed's side, she covered her mouth with one hand. "Oh, my God..." she gasped. "Penny..."

Nick looked between Sara and the girl frantically for a couple seconds.

"I knew her..." explained Sara. "I knew her..." Her gaze rolled wearily across the bloody blankets to where the woman lay. "And this is her grandmother. Oh, my God, how did–

HOW...?"

She began to shake a little, and both of Nick's arms crushed around her. Holding her together, it almost felt like. Or, at least, externally. Internally, she felt the dam break, and without the strength to hold her head up anymore, she let it collapse against his chest.

That's when the old woman gasped.

Nick jumped back, hanging on to Sara's arm and thrusting her behind him protectively.

She was alive. And she was gurgling up blood as her hands began to reach around.

"Get the paramedics!" commanded Nick.

He rushed to her side and began to turn her over onto her side.

"It's okay. It's okay..." she heard him saying behind her. "Just let it all out..."

But his voice faded from her hearing range as she shot down the stairs like she was a bolt of the lightning that was still raging in the skies above. Her shoes clicking madly on the floor and her flashlight beam shaking in front of her, she erupted from the front door like an exploding volcano and jumped right down the three porch steps into the mud below.

"Brass!" she called out as she went.

He turned from the officer he was talking to, and – seeing how upset she looked – started towards her at once. "What is it?!" he demanded.

"There's someone hurt upstairs! We need help!"


	7. I Swear

Getting the rest of the mess cleaned up at the Kenleys' house was both an unpleasant and a hazy affair. What a night this was turning out to be...

Therefore, Nick was more than a little relieved forty-five minutes later when he found himself walking through the halls of the lab again. That is, until he passed the break room... where he saw Sara leaning against the table with the folder in her hand. At the sight of the manically obsessive look on her face, he sighed, and altered his course to join her at it.

"Sara?"

She looked up from her reading for less than half a second. "What?"

He paused, and took a look at her closer. She was no longer shaking, but the dark circles under her eyes were more pronounced than before. Her hair was falling straight down on her shoulders, rather than in its usual curly state. The tendons in her hands poked out from the strength she was gripping the folder with. She didn't blink once in the whole half-minute he studied her...

So, rather than attempt to suggest that she take another proper break, he leaned against the table next to her. And asked instead, "Where are we?"

"We have three victims now," she said stoically. "First, Jackie Joplin from the hotel. Second, Janice Kenley from her home. And third, Penny Freila... the little girl from the upstairs bedroom at the Kenleys'."

He scratched the top of his head. "And the evidence?"

"It's already with Greg and Mandy."

"Good," he said with a nod. "Very good." But try as he might, he couldn't resist: "Are you okay?"

She slammed the folder closed and threw it onto the table. It slid on the smooth surface a little ways before coming to a stop just at the edge opposite of them. When he looked up from checking to see that it wasn't going to fall, he saw that she had buried her face in her hands.

"I don't think so," she finally admitted. "I don't know, Nick, I–"

But she stopped. So he edged a little closer along the table they were leaning against.

"You're what?"

"I just, I... I don't know. I don't know, I'm not sure," she pressed on. "At first, I thought it was just because it was a hell of a day. Grissom had me working alone the whole shift. And then, I went to see him before I was going to leave. And he wouldn't put down his damn bug... until Catherine and Warrick walked in. He looked up before they even said anything, I think. And it just got me thinking, I've been here for a few months now. And sometimes, I sort of miss my home back in San Francisco. And then, I saw Penny up those stairs... in that bed, and I just– I don't know what to think anymore. I don't know what to do. I don't know..."

Like he had back at the Kenley house, he put both arms around her. But this time, slower and more carefully. And it worked: she was eased out of her shell and just rested still against him. For a few minutes they just stood there. She didn't cry, she didn't run... she didn't say anything. Just stood there. And eventually, returned his embrace with one arm and a mumbled thanks into his shoulder.

He nodded his welcome back to her. "Sure thing." And then, as she stood up straight again: "Do you... d'you wanna tell me about the... the girl? How you knew her? Would it help or...?"

He had regretted asking as soon as he started. But it surprised him when she nodded... Brushing some of her hair out of her face, she pulled a chair out and sat down in it. Beside her, he did the same thing. And for a couple of seconds more, she did not say anything. Just looked around the room like she was trying to find the right words...

"You remember what happened with Holly Gribbs," she finally said.

It was more of a statement than a question, but he hastened to assure her that he did.

"Okay. Good... So, after all that, I got a cab. I went to the nearest gas station and bought a map..."

* * *

_The wind was blowing... light, and breezy, but still blowing. Her hair kept flowing into her face. Obstructing her view of the map._

_ Not that seeing it was really doing her much good. She'd been okay up until she reached whatever residential area she was in. There was a playground to her left up ahead, but no sign to tell her which one. Squinting at the map, she realized she could have been by any of the three she saw at once. She suspected the one closest to the crime lab... but she couldn't be sure. She'd been gone for a while, maybe she'd gotten farther than she thought._

_ She looked around for a few moments, hoping to catch sight of a street sign. Or just something to tell her where she was. And she was in luck, in a way: there was a street sign, alright... But it was all the way across the park. With a sigh of surrender, she started across it._

_ Something happened when she reached mid-park and happened to notice a child laughing particularly loud on the merry-go-round. The yellow-colored, spider-shaped merry-go-round. It was like she was struck by a sense of magic and wonder._

_ She was in Las Vegas._

_ As if to emphasize the feeling, a short burst of warm wind blew across her. Through her..._

_ She redirected her course to the nearest bench, which happened to be on the edge of a basketball court. Some boys who looked to be early teenagers were playing basketball on one end of it, while some girls who looked to be about the same age were jumping rope on the other end. Double-Dutch-ing it, actually... Impressively so._

_ She raised the map down by her lap to her face again. Maybe she could make out something she had missed when she was more flustered now that she felt more relaxed..._

_ "You look lost."_

_ Sara lowered the map. In front of her – standing with her hands behind her back, her hair in two ponytails, and a light blue sun dress on – was a friendly looking young girl who was missing a tooth._

_ "Oh..." said Sara. "I, uhm... yeah, actually. I AM a little lost..."_

_ As if by prior invitation, the girl took two steps forward and popped up onto the bench beside Sara. "Is that a map?"_

_ Sara smiled. "It sure is. I don't suppose you know how to read it, do you?"_

_ "We're learning in school," said the girl matter-of-factly. "We just started today. Teacher told me I was a 'natural'."_

_ "Oh?"_

_ "That's right." And then she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Mommy said she would buy my favorite kind of ice cream if I got another A on my report card..."_

_ Sara – having leaned in to listen more closely – sat back up with a laugh. "Mommy sounds pretty cool, then."_

_ "Oh, she is," continued the girl. "She works very hard, you know."_

_ "Do I?"_

_ "Well, don't you? All Mommys work hard. You look like a Mommy... Where's your girl at?"_

_ At this, Sara stopped. It was a few moments before she could answer. "Well... I'm not a Mommy, actually," she said, running her hand through her hair to get it out of her face again._

_ "Oh," said the little girl. And then she looked up thoughtfully. "Why not?"_

_ Sara shrugged. "I don't know, I just... never met the right Daddy, I suppose..."_

_ The girl nodded, as if she completely understood this. "My Daddy's gone. He fell."_

_ "I'm sorry..." said Sara, genuinely._

_ "It's okay," said the girl. "It happened before I was born."_

_ Sara sniffled. She sure wished she could have looked at her own father's death that way..._

_ "My Mommy showed me the pictures, though," added the girl with a bright smile. "Someday, I'd like to marry a Prince just like him!"_

_ Sara took a deep breath, to clear her sudden miniature emotional upheaval. Then she smiled down at the girl and patted her shoulder once. "I hope you find one."_

_ The girl patted Sara's hand in return. "I hope you find a good Daddy for your girl someday, too."_

_ Then her little fingers locked around Sara's and she pulled with surprising strength as she jumped down from the bench. "Come on!" she said. "Let's go play jump rope!"_

* * *

Nick stared with his mouth open.

Sara brushed some loose tears that had escaped her eyes off of her cheeks. "Her grandmother came to talk to me after that. Told me the girl's name was Penny," she continued in her story-telling. "She helped me with the map... Penny hugged me, and then they left."

And she let her head hang down, resting her forehead on the palm of one hand.

Nick reached out and took the other, where it had sat looking lonely on the end of the table...

She looked up with a watery smile. "Thanks, Nick. But I think I do want to get off this case, now."

"Okay..." said Nick, softly. "Come on. Before Brass gets back, I'll drive you home."

"No... no," said Sara. "I don't want to go home. I want to look into Penny's death. Personally."

Nick exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. How to go about this, when she was already so exhausted and wound up...

"I don't think that's a good idea, Sara."

It hurt a little, when she suddenly ripped her hand out of his.

"Wait a second, hear me out," he said quickly.

"I don't need to hear it, Nick. Grissom's already given me the speech about not getting too emotionally attached to the victims and all that..."

"Yeah," agreed Nick. "Yeah, I know. But that's not what I mean. I get emotional, so..."

She giggled, in spite of how upset she looked. "That's one way of putting it..."

"Oh, ha ha," he said with mock irritation. But his smile undermined it. "I think the opposite, usually. Bein' emotionally attached means you give your all to the case, sometimes. And I know you would, Sara."

On a whim, he chose the moment to take her hand again. She looked down at it, but did not pull her own away from his again...

"I know you would," he repeated. "But think about it for a second, too: the other side of the coin – the one where your emotions can get in the way? – it really does exist. So maybe... maybe now's not the best time to investigate what happened to Penny. Not until after we finish this case." He jutted his lips out as an idea suddenly occurred to him. "Or..." he tried, "...until you go home and get some sleep first."

She didn't buy it. "Nice try, Nicky."

He half-shrugged. "Well, can't blame a guy for tryin'..."

She rubbed each eye with the palm of her hand that he wasn't holding. "I suppose not. But, yeah... you're right. Right now, there's just no way I could do it. I couldn't. I'd miss something, or I'd get hurt or lost again, or... whatever."

He rubbed her hand in his with his thumb, hoping it was a reassuring gesture rather than a condescending one. He took it as a good sign when she squeezed his hand back.

"Well, hey..." he said, "...when it IS time to look into it, you know I'll be there, right?"

She looked up from their clasped hands and blinked, surprised. "What?"

"Oh, come on... You stayed with me this whole case. You know I'm gonna be there for you too, right?"

She averted her gaze, but grinned widely as she did so. "I guess I did consider it... Consider asking you, I mean..."

"Ask me," he offered. "Or don't, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna be there, anyway... It's a part of my case, too. We'll find out what happened to her. We'll tell her family, the whole deal. If we gotta tear every stone up from the Earth in the middle of this God-forsaken city..."

He tightened his grip on her fingers and raised their hands up in between them. Then he poked his pinky finger out and wiggled it.

"I swear on it," he said.

Teeth shining through her grinning lips, she interlocked her pinky with his and wiggled it back. They stared at each other, swinging their hands back and forth for a second. And then their laughter broke through their mouths.

"All right, all right, all right," Nick said at last. He stood up, and stretched his arms up over his head. "Come on, then. Before we can do any of that, we gotta finish this case, first."

She also stood up, straightening out her ruffled shirt as she did. "Agreed. Let's go see if they've made any progress with our evidence."

But as he started to take a step out of the room, he felt her hugging him once again, this time with two arms.

"Aw..."

"Thanks, Nick," she said. "Really."

"You're very welcome, Sara," he said back. "Really."

"Ah-hem."

They turned to see Greg standing in the doorway.

"Yes?" asked Nick.

"I think I've got something you should see..." replied Greg.


	8. Mrs Freila

Greg threw himself into his stool and spun it around once. "Okay," he began. "Here's what I've got for you." And from a stack of nearby papers, he pulled one off the top. "That dried blood that came from the wrench? It's from the same source as the blood in the hallway."

"No surprise there," said Sara with a nod. "She was covered in it, it was in her pocket..."

"Well, here's something you might wanna know. Brass was at the hospital with the old woman. He sent over a sample of her DNA. The blood on the couch cushion is hers."

At this, Sara was kind of surprised. She exchanged a glance with Nick, who appeared to be just as much so.

"But... we found her upstairs," said Nick. "She wasn't bloody. On the outside, anyway..."

Greg shrugged. "I don't know. That's just what the system's telling me. Her name's Dawnel Freila."

"She has a rap sheet?" asked Sara incredulously.

"No. She reported a stalking back in 1987. Some guy she claims was following her around the city. He turned up dead, and she was found innocent because of a plane ticket."

Nick raised his eyebrows at Greg inquisitively.

"What?" replied Greg defensively. "I like to research old cases in my spare time."

Nick shook his head. "Whatever, man. What else you got?"

"Quite possibly the grossest thing yet," said Greg. He spun on his stool and took a new sheet of paper off the pile.

"You really like the nasty things in life, don't you?" remarked Sara, at the sight of the grin on Greg's face.

"Only in the lab," said Greg. "Now, the gross thing is this biological fluid. It's semen... and it belongs to the victim's husband. Mark Kenley."

He slid over and gestured to the screen with one hand. Sara looked to Nick, but he stepped back to allow her to get through. With a brief smile, she scrolled down the computer screen to look at the rap sheet of their prime suspect...

"'Mark Kenley'," she read aloud. "Arrested for drunk and disorderly outside of a liquor store."

"There's a shock," said Nick sarcastically. "With all the destruction he left behind in that house, I wouldn't be surprised if he's STILL tanked when we catch up with him."

"Tanked and raping another victim," interjected Greg, a somber tone in his voice all of a sudden. "That semen was found on the rug, right? There by the couch where the old woman's blood was..."

The implications of Greg's words seemed to creep up on Sara like a pool of cold water the first time one jumps in. She stood up and looked over at him with the most disgusted look on her face she could muster.

He shrugged. "Sorry," he said. "But I couldn't help wondering."

"Yeah, but did you really have to share that one?" said Nick.

"It could be pertinent to your case," defended Greg.

"I doubt it, but..." Sara started to argue, and then gave up, "...whatever. Okay, Nick?"

He looked from Greg to her in an instant. "Hmm?"

"Where does this leave us?"

"Well, I'd say it puts Mark Kenley at the top of our suspects list. If not our ONLY suspect. Guilty for murdering his wife AND the transsexual at the hotel."

"Mandy's probably got something for you, too, by now," said Greg, pointing at her through the glass wall. "You might want to go ask her."

"We'll do that," said Nick. "Thanks, Greggo."

"Yeah, thanks," added Sara sarcastically.

"I aim to please," responded Greg. And then he spun his stool back around to face his computer.

As they crossed the hall to the printing lab, Sara and Nick exchanged glances of unreadability. What were they going to do with Greg...?

"There you are!" exclaimed Mandy when they entered. "I told Greg to send you my way."

"He did, he did," assured Nick. "Calm down. He had to give us his, uh... theories."

Sara raised her eyebrows. _That's one way of looking at it..._ she thought.

"Is that so?" asked Mandy with a knowing tone in her voice. "Well, maybe I can help scrub them from your mind."

And then, like Greg, she took a sheet of paper from a growing pile. Sara couldn't resist a slight smile as she remembered the ever-towering collection of papers on Grissom's desk from earlier that night...

"So, your prints from the wrench and the bottle of hair coloring belong to the second victim's husband," explained Mandy. "A Mark Kenley, arrested for–"

"–drunk and disorderly," finished Sara and Nick together.

She arched one eyebrow in obvious irritation. "Yep. But these smaller prints on the plate are harder to pinpoint." She raised the lifted prints and folded the plastic back down over the backdrop. "I can't find anything in the system, but I'm gonna guess that's because whoever made them... was too young to be in it."

Sara scratched her throat, where a lump was slowly building. "Uhm..." and she cleared it, "yeah, that's probably because they came from a child."

She felt a strong pulling from around her shoulders, and an instant later, she realized Nick had put his arm around her again. She gave up at once, and dropped her head down on his shoulder with a sigh.

Mandy looked around uncomfortably. "Well, I won't be able to confirm until... we get those prints from Doc Robbins' autopsy."

In the corner of her eye, Sara saw Nick nodding. "Okay," he said. "Alright, then we'll, uh–"

Suddenly, his phone rang. With the arm that wasn't around Sara, he extracted it from his pocket and flipped it open.

"Stokes," he said formally into the mouthpiece.

Sara grinned...

"Hey, it's Brass," she heard from the other side. "Listen, I just thought you and Sara would wanna know that Dawnel Freila woke up about fifteen minutes ago."

"Oh!" exclaimed Nick. "Yeah! Yeah, we do wanna know that."

"Great. Then she's waiting for you, for all intents and purposes. Just flash your IDs at the front desk, the nurse'll take you right to her."

The phone was already half-flipped closed when he answered hurriedly with, "Okay, thanks." Then he turned to Sara. "The grandma's up."

"Okay, let's go, then."

They both waved at Mandy before borderline jogging off down the hall.

* * *

Of the two general ways that people thought about hospitals, Sara'd always figured she was in the camp that found their chrome sterility to be disturbing rather than comforting.

Or maybe it was just the nature of her job. Either way, she kept as close to Nick as she figured she could without walking all over him as they inched through the surprisingly crowded hallways. As they maneuvered, she noticed a young woman in a wheelchair who appeared to be having a visit with her family. She looked awfully upset, and upon taking a second glance, Sara recognized the color of the band around her wrist – it signaled a sexual assault victim. She shuddered, and gripped Nick's bicep under the pretense of trying not to get separated in all the people. He smiled back at her for a fleeting moment and led her through the streaming crowd by the hand.

It felt like an eternity later, but they finally found Brass by the front desk. He waved at them in a professionally formal way as they approached. He appeared quite engaged in the conversation he was having with the doctor in front of him, but as Sara and Nick came up close, the doctor was called away by a nurse who tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hey," greeted Nick. "Where are we?"

"Doctor Jay is presiding over Dawnel Freila. He's just given me the skinny on her medical condition. Apparently, she's a very healthy woman. Tests all come back positive consistently, good diet, lots of age-appropriate exercise..."

She knew she shouldn't, but she couldn't help looking back at the woman in the wheelchair while Brass' ramblings continued. Nick would take care of it for her. He promised he would...

It seemed the victim of the assault had come to life a little, as a man who looked to be about her age suddenly became visible to Sara amongst the sea of people. He went right up to her, knelt down by her chair, and embraced her. Her body wracked with sobs. It was only then that Sara noticed the conditions surrounding her. There were two children playing with the hospital offered toys in the corner, while a middle-aged woman looked like she was on the verge of an emotional come-apart. Whoever the man hugging the woman was, the children came running up to him as soon as they noticed him. Sara didn't realize how her bottom lip was trembling until after he had hugged them both, too. Then she heard him refer to them as her children, his nephew and niece. So it WAS family... coming together to support whatever had happened to their beloved relative... Sara couldn't help wondering, who had done whatever they'd done to her – was it another relative of theirs, or maybe the father of the two children, or had she just accidentally caught the wrong person's eye on the street...? And why...? Why did it have to turn out like that...?

"So, she's pretty shaken up, to say the least," came Brass' distant-sounding monotone to Sara's ears. "If she gets too upset when you're talking to her, go ahead and leave. We'll find another way to get what we need to know. I've already got a statement, but I promised her I'd be there."

"Got it." That was Nick... right? "Thanks, Jim," he continued. Then she saw him turn to her in the corner of her eye. "Ready for this one, Sara?"

She sighed. "I suppose."

He leaned his head a little closer. "You sure?"

"Uh huh. Come on, Nicky, let's just go do it."

"Alright," he surrendered, and offered her his hand. "Come on."

She took it, and they formed a chain of three. Sara could see an overhead view of them parting the waters of people in her mind. It was an amusing image, and she smiled to herself at it.

They found the battered looking elder woman sitting up expectantly in her hospital bed. She was obviously jumpy, and understandably so at that. When they entered, Sara noted that her eyes immediately went to Brass... and she sighed a barely audible sigh at once after that. Her expression changed into a much softer one as she regarded Sara and Nick, who both thought it best to wait by the door.

"MRS. FREILA," said Brass loudly, "THESE ARE CSIs NICK STOKES AND SARA SIDLE."

Nick waved with a short "hi", but Sara just smiled. And inwardly shook her head at Nick's constant eagerness.

"THEY'RE THE ONES WHO FOUND YOU IN THE HOUSE," continued Brass. "AFTER YOU WERE ATTACKED. THEY'D LIKE TO ASK YOU A FEW MORE QUESTIONS, IF THAT'S ALL RIGHT."

"Oh," replied Mrs. Freila. "I suppose that will be all right. But... I really don't think I can tell you anything else that would help you."

"That's alright," said Nick reassuringly. "Sometimes, things we might not think can help us eventually do."

She seemed to understand this. She nodded, anyway, and over looked them from top to bottom. When she was done scanning Sara, she squinted her eyes.

"You look very familiar, young lady."

Sara couldn't help looking down at her feet. She clasped her hands behind her back and took a deep breath. "Yes, Mrs. Freila. I remember you..."

"Oh!" the old woman suddenly exclaimed. "Oh, Sara! From the park!"

Sara grinned, and nodded in a way that she hoped was encouraging rather than impatiently. "That's right."

And suddenly, Mrs. Freila seemed to tire out. She lay back on her large pillow and looked up at the ceiling. Her hands began to shake, and Sara crossed the room in a step driven by compulsion to sit with her. She registered Nick and Brass' exchanged glances as an afterthought.

"You were there the day that I took Penny out... on the anniversary of her father's death."

Sara scratched her uncomfortable feeling throat. "Uhm... yeah," was all she could say, in a soft tone of voice.

"Is it... is it true, then?" asked Mrs. Freila.

She looked at Sara with an expression that caused Sara's mouth to drop open a little and her senses to fade. Mrs. Freila's experienced eyes sparkled, as if dangerously closed to tears. Her long white hair, tied back in a ponytail, rested on her shoulder. Her hand shook a little within Sara's... The faint hope that lingered on her face did not seem to be enough that she expected an answer any different than the one Sara knew she must give.

It still didn't make it any easier. "Yeah, Mrs. Freila," she answered, and swallowed once. "I'm afraid Penny's... gone."

Rather she had already let it all out or it just hadn't hit yet, Mrs. Freila did not cry. Her face became suddenly calm. But she did look away, and her hands didn't stop shaking.

"I see..." was all she said for a moment, and she did not look back at Sara.

Sara looked over at Nick. He was standing with his hands on his hips and his soft eyes making small movements as they observed her. She exhaled sharply, and turned back to Mrs. Freila.

"Mrs. Freila..." she began cautiously, "...how did... you and Penny get in to that house."

"It's my daughter's," answered Mrs. Freila. Her voice sounded a little less composed... "My daughter Janice's, and her husband Mark's."

She didn't seem inclined to continue, and Sara was not sure if she should ask again.

Then Nick was there. He knelt down next to Sara, and when he talked, he sounded like he comforting a wounded animal.

"Ma'am, your last name is 'Freila'," he stated. "But the Mark and Janice who own the house you're talking about is 'Kenley'."

"By way of marriage," explained Mrs. Freila. "Janice accepted Mark's last name. I remember the wedding to this day. They all seemed so happy... They had just found out they were expecting their first son."

At this, Sara's head jerked around to Nick and then Brass automatically.

"Wait a minute," said Brass. "There were children there?"

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Freila. "Why...?" And she paused, surveying each of their faces in turn while the truth of the situation slowly seemed to come to her. "Don't... aren't they safe?!"

Brass did not answer. He turned and roughly shoved a man who happened to be passing the room they were in away from the door on his way out. With the other hand, he was already reaching for his radio.

"Dispatch, this is Jim Brass! We have missing children, last name of Kenley. Presently presumed in the hands of their father, Mark Kenley, a current murder suspect. Requesting backup at the Kenley residence immediately."


	9. Give and Take

"I don't understand," said Mrs. Freila, just as Brass disappeared into the stairwell entrance. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she looked between Sara and Nick with the very definition of incredulity on her face. "How in the world did Mark become a murder suspect?"

Now it was Sara's turn to look confused. "Mrs. Freila, wasn't it him who attacked you?"

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Freila, waving her hand dismissively. "No, no, it couldn't have been Mark."

Sara looked at Nick for a moment, who was down on one knee digging something out of his kit. Upon hearing her words, he paused in the middle of extracting a plastic scraper from his kit... looked up and met her eyes. Like Sara, he appeared very confused.

He turned to Mrs. Freila. "But ma'am... we found evidence that places him there when all of this happened."

Mrs. Freila did not look impressed. She crossed her arms and affixed him with a glare that was clearly meant to be a challenge. "What kind of evidence, young man? Because I'll tell you right now, there is no way my son-in-law would ever lay a hand on me or my granddaughter like that. He loved Penny. He loved all of us. He wouldn't–" but her lower lip began to shake, and she didn't finish.

Sara sighed, half in pity and half in exasperation. It wasn't that she didn't believe Mrs. Freila, so-to-speak. But the evidence they'd collected from both scenes incriminated Mark Kenley as clearly as an alarm clock rang in a person's head for hours after it had woken them up early in the morning. And, well... she didn't want to think it, but Mrs. Freila wasn't exactly a young woman anymore...

She chose to continue carefully. "Mrs. Freila, we found semen, matching Mark's, on the floor in the living room."

At this, Mrs. Freila winced.

"And his fingerprints were all over a wrench that was used to beat your daughter to death with," added Nick from across the room.

He stood up and came over to them with a scraper and a small evidence envelope for collecting scrapings. His expression was pained, and it made Sara look away from it.

"That can't be," Mrs. Freila answered. "It just cannot! Mark loved Janice... He wouldn't do this."

"Mark seems to have a bit of a problem controlling his temper," Sara pressed gently. She squeezed Mrs. Freila's hand once and then patted it. "We found his semen in hotel room with another victim in it. It's very likely he may have murdered that woman, as well."

Mrs. Freila withdrew her hand from Sara's and covered both of her ears. She shook her head a couple of times, and the tears of acceptance began to form in her eyes. "Alright, alright," she conceded. "I understand."

Sara looked at Nick, who had gotten down on his other knee next to her and was waiting patiently to collect the scrapings from under Mrs. Freila's fingernails. He was determinedly focusing on the hand rail on the bed. And there were hard lines forming on his face, as she watched. But then she turned away and put a hand to her own forehead. She was beginning to feel the effects of her need for rest again, and while she listened to the elderly woman cry, she took a moment to close her eyes and try to dull the headache building there. What a nightmare, was all she could think...

"Maybe it was Mark there," said Mrs. Freila after a moment. "I can't be sure. I couldn't tell who it was. It was too dark. And he never spoke. He just came in and hit Penny. So I grabbed his arms and tried to pull him off of her. But I couldn't... and then he turned and shoved me onto the couch. I told Penny to run, but he went after her. Maybe if I'd been quiet, he wouldn't have noticed her leaving. Maybe–"

But Sara couldn't keep quiet at this. " –Mrs. Freila, listen to me," she interrupted firmly. "Listen to me, okay? There is nothing you could have done, nothing at all, to have changed this. Do you understand?" It was like a fire built up over its walls in her stomach and prodded her voice into speaking. She reached out and again took the woman's hand forcefully.

Mrs. Freila looked away and didn't say anything.

"You and your granddaughter, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," interjected Nick, softly. "You couldn't have seen it coming."

"That's right," said Sara. "And there's nothing you could have said differently, nothing else you could have done. No way you could have kept this from happening..."

The truth of her own words sort of sank in as she spoke. It was a horrible truth to accept, but one she knew she must. How could she be of any comfort to Mrs. Freila if she, herself, could not comprehend it? But that was why she'd become a CSI, was it not? The words of Grissom, back at his entomology lecture when he had talked briefly about his career, played in her mind:

_"We are the victims' last voice..."_

Small comfort to her, when she thought of Penny positioned in that bed where Sara and Nick had found her. Surely, it be an even smaller comfort to Mrs. Freila... an elder woman who was not well versed in crime scene investigating or law enforcement of any kind. And who had just lost at least two relatives, was waiting to hear news of three more... and learned a shocking truth about her son-in-law.

Working to keep her composure up, Sara let go of Mrs. Freila's hand and touched her arm isntead. "But, Mrs. Freila... we will find whoever did this. If it wasn't Mark, even. We will find them. Alright? I promise."

"Me, too," said Nick. And he, too touched Mrs. Freila's arm. "We're on it. We'll find him, and we'll find your other grandchildren. But we need your help." He lifted the scraper and envelope in his other hand. "I noticed there's some scrapings under your fingernails," he explained, when Mrs. Freila looked puzzled. "If I could collect them, we could put them through our system back at the lab and confirm if it really was Mark who attacked you."

"And if not," said Sara reassuringly, "we can get a lead on who it really was."

She pondered it for a moment, but this seemed easy enough for Mrs. Freila to understand. Although she didn't seem entirely comfortable with it – her eyebrows remained slightly furrowed, and her mouth muscles twitched a little – the kindly woman stretched her arm out towards Nick.

"Here. Like this," he said. "Sara?" And he handed her a small piece of wax paper.

As Sara accepted it from him, he took Mrs. Freila gently by the elbow and the wrist. She watched him maneuver her arm into a workable position. For a moment, it looked like she might have been in pain... But the spasm that went across her face became a smile.

One that Nick did not miss. "Okay there?" he asked, with a smile in return.

"My arm is, yes."

Nick's grinned widened just a little, and Sara noticed how brightly his teeth shined through his lips. Especially in such a dimly lit hospital room. With the hand that wasn't holding the wax paper, she rubbed the side of her arm, and looked around uncomfortably. Come to think of it... the room was small enough that she actually felt a little bit claustrophobic. And she'd never had that problem before.

"Sara?"

She looked back to Nick, and handed him the wax paper upon registering his outstretched hand. With a careful motion that showed signs of the deftness that comes with experience, he slid the paper underneath Mrs. Freila's fingers. She watched his movements as carefully as Sara found herself doing...

"Alright," said Nick. "Tell me if this hurts you, at any point."

Mrs. Freila nodded. So Nick adjusted the scraper from in between his pinky and ring fingers until it was between his thumb and forefinger instead. The sounds of the very light scraping reached Sara's ears, and she suddenly realized it had quieted down quite a bit in the hospital. Or at least, where they were in the hospital. She looked over her shoulder for a moment to see a decidedly-decreased flow of people milling past the doorway.

"Alrighty, ma'am," said Nick. "I think that should do it."

Sara looked back to see him slipping the scraper into his front vest pocket. Then he folded the wax paper into a funnel shape and slid the scrapings down the thin edge into the small envelope.

"That's all?" asked Mrs. Freila, as if she expected more. "That was so simple."

Nick grinned again. "Yeah, it was, wasn't it? It's a complicated job, made up of simple steps. Wouldn't you say, Sara?"

She balanced her chin on one hand, which she'd propped up on the side of the bed. "I'd say so," she sighed with a smile at him.

He went back over to his kit and started to put everything back in order. She watched him at first, but then felt Mrs. Freila touch her on the arm. She looked over to the old woman expectantly.

"There's something else," said Mrs. Freila. "I don't know if you need to do anything with it or not, but..." She lifted the arm of her hospital gown to her shoulder.

Sara winced at the sight. A long scar was forming from the crook of Mrs. Freila's arm to her shoulder. Behind them, she heard Nick suck in a breath of air through his teeth.

"Whoever it was... Mark, or whoever... had a knife," explained Mrs. Freila, shaky voiced again. "So do be careful out there, while you're looking, won't you?"

"Absolutely."

That was Nick, and his voice sounded stony. Sara looked over to see him glaring down at the markings on Mrs. Freila's arm with the fiercest expression she could ever recall him having. His eyelids were twitching, and the veins in his arms were poking out prominently from the effort with which he was squeezing his crossed arms across his torso. His mouth had set into a line, with his jaws clenched so tightly she could see and hear his teeth grinding through his pressed together lips. She flinched a little – it was almost scary on him...

"And if you learn anything about my grandchildren... I've lost enough already..." said Mrs. Freila.

It took some effort, but she tore her eyes away from Nick and back to Mrs. Freila. "Absolutely. As soon as we know something, you'll be the first to hear about it. I promise."

Mrs. Freila rolled the sleeve of her gown back to her wrist. Then she held her arms out expectantly. Sara exhaled, and leaned forward to allow the old woman a hug, patting her shoulder during it.

"Do take care now," said Mrs. Freila. "It's a scary world out there after all, isn't it? If people could do things like this to each other..."

Sara nodded, and smiled when she stood up, despite the thickness building in her throat. It surprised her a little when Mrs. Freila reached out to Nick, as well. He had turned red, on top of his fearsome facial expression. It was remarkable how much he reminded Sara of a saber toothed tiger that had had its fangs removed at the moment...

But he pulled the thick latex gloves off of his hands with barely contained movements, and went obediently to the old woman anyway. But Mrs. Freila wasn't letting him get away THAT easily. It increased Sara's smile when she pulled him down into an embrace with some surprising strength. The arm she'd used was even the one with the scar on it...

"Thank you," said Nick, for some reason. He stood up and patted her shoulder comfortingly. "We'll be back when we know something, okay?"

"Or... just to visit," added Sara, on a whim of inspiration.

"I'd like that," was the last thing Mrs. Freila said before she laid back on her pillow. Her chest rose and fell in a deep breath.

And Sara was pleased to see, as she and Nick stepped out into the much roomier hallway, that she looked much better than she had when they'd first come in. Her hope was that the weary, broken old lady would sleep in peace for a little while. In case the news they would have to bring her later on turned out to be bad.

She was also pleased to find that she was less worried about it than she was about fifteen minutes ago... No less weary... but less worried... It felt like a breath of much needed fresh air. And when they were outside again, she intended to take one literally.

She couldn't say the same for Nick, though. Not by a long shot, as he was glaring out the window at the night sky with now fully narrowed eyelids. And she found the palm of his hand sweaty when she took it.

"Cheer up, Nick. This is good news! We've got a lead."

He nodded. But his expression – from what she could see in the rainy reflection of the window, anyway – did not change at all.

She leaned her head forward, as if to calm herself before she spoke again. But when she raised her head to say something, she found that she really had no words for him. There was nothing she thought she could say that wouldn't sound like desperate reaching in a lame attempt at comforting him. Being the shoulder to cry on was his specialty; that much she had gleaned right away when she'd first come to Vegas, and observed the team dynamic. Catherine frequently found her way to him when she had a problem with Lindsey. Warrick was always asking him to unwind after shift. Even Grissom seemed to look to him in a particularly stressful moment. It happened a lot less often than with the others, but still...

And that much he had proved splendidly throughout their whole shift, thus far. It lifted her spirits even now, thinking about how enthusiastically he had greeted her. She thought back to how carefully he'd led her through the pitch black Kenley house. Like he'd been worried she would get hurt. How he'd thrown his arm out to protect her from unseen things lurking in the dark... And of course, his promise: that he would help her track down Penny's killer. Perhaps even more helpful than that was his validation of her emotions, rather than trying to shut them down all the time like everyone else seemed intent on doing... – it felt like she wouldn't have to try so hard with him, and she liked that. In ways she couldn't describe, at the moment.

She felt kind of bad she hadn't been as much help to him, actually. A thought that made her clear her throat; as if he knew, somehow, what she was thinking as they rounded the corner to go to the elevator. But still, she could think of nothing to say...

It wasn't until the elevator doors closed behind them that he said anything, either. "You know, it's just..."

But he stopped. So she looked at him, as if to press him to continue.

"It's when kids get involved," he said. "You know? Kids, and the elderly... That's when I can't take it."

Give and take, she supposed... But she'd taken enough from Nicky all night. Words still failed her... But the embrace of a friend was always good. And it felt like a way – a small way, but a way – to give a little back. So right there, in the small elevator... they rode to the very ground floor with their arms around each other. The only solace they felt they had in the midst of the storm, both figurative and literal, raging on around them.

Later on, when she asked herself how she'd worked up the nerve to do what she wanted to do, she was sure she'd know better than what she was telling herself now: that what she wanted to do was simply because of all that had happened to them since she'd got there. Later, when she considered more carefully, she'd realize it was because of what had happened BETWEEN them since she'd got there.

Which was the real reason why, even though the thought made her stomach flutter... she managed to find a way to press her lips to his once before the elevator door opened on the floor of the parking garage.

A friendly kiss, right? Something she could do for him, after all that he'd done for her. For everybody, really... And a way of giving him something to help him hold himself up. Is that why he was smiling so brightly?

Perhaps. But it didn't explain why she was.


	10. The Next Step

"Here."

Nick held the door open, and Sara stepped through with an obligatory thanks. Looking around, it amazed her how busy the place was at night. Even in a place like Las Vegas, she'd never gotten over her general perception of nighttime being sleep time. Didn't anybody else ever see it like that? As she yawned, she wondered why she was even thinking about sleep...

"Some more coffee in order, perhaps?" asked Nick cheerily.

"Perhaps," she answered. "Coffee or a line of speed."

He chuckled, but shook his head. "Never say something like that in a crime lab. Or anywhere near law enforcement."

"I was kidding."

"Yeah, I know. Someone might hear you and think you aren't, though. Especially since you're new."

At first, she was pissed at his mention of her status as a newcomer.

But she was glad she hadn't glared at him like she wanted to when the next thing he said was, "And they don't know you like I do."

"...Oh," was all she could answer with.

The lab looked like it had just received a shipment. Except the shipment was of people, and they were all working on various things. Sara winced in distaste when she saw that Ecklie, from days, was there. She checked her watch. At 4:30 in the morning, it was still WAY too early for days to be working. Unless they had a long case like she was having... But even if that WAS the case, trying to drag sympathy out of herself for Ecklie's sake was still too much for her.

Nick guided her into the break room with a hand on her back, and pulled a chair out with the other so she could sit in it. "How'd you like your coffee? Usual cream and sugar levels, or straight black?"

"Give it to me straight black," she said at once.

It had been a very long night. And she was sure she'd run out of adrenaline reserves soon. Pure coffee was needed to rectify the situation. He must've thought so too, because he didn't make a charming comment or respond with a Southern analogy... or even look up at it. She smiled when she saw that was because he was pouring himself a cup of straight coffee, as well.

"Thanks," she said when he set her cup down in front of her.

"Mm." He flopped down into the chair catty-cornered to her, and pulled the case file from seemingly nowhere. "Alright, let's take a look," he said with a weary sigh.

At a closer glance, she could see that it must've been starting to get to him, too. Far from his determined, fierce-looking self back at the hospital, he now looked at least half as bedraggled as she didn't doubt she looked. She leaned forward on the palm of her hand as he began to read from the folder. In a tone of voice that was so bleary, she took it as a confirmation.

"We need Greg to test the DNA scrapings. We need to get the autopsy results from Doc for the real Janice Kenley. We need to find Mark Kenley..." He slid the folder away with an elbow, then rubbed his eyes with both hands and sighed. "And the kids, of course. We need to find the kids. Get back to Mrs. Freila about them."

Something about that situation seemed less alarming to Sara than she thought it probably should have seemed. A man who killed his wife and niece, and attempted to kill his mother-in-law, was not to be taken lightly. But she had this feeling the boys would be fine. Not that she'd put a lot of thought into becoming a mother – as she'd told Penny, she figured she'd just never met the right father for the situation. But she was decently certain all women had the instinct, to some degree. And she was a woman, if nothing else...

Therefore, it was with a ho-hum tone that she murmured, "Hmm," as she took a sip of her straight-black coffee.

"So, if you wanna rest here, I'll take those DNA scrapings to Greg." He then got up and began to dig around in the box of remaining evidence. His eyebrows furrowed as he extracted item after item from it. "Where the hell is it?"

She drummed her fingers lightly on the side of her coffee mug in silent entertainment. Her eyes had fallen on it right away, even through the small hole in the side of the box. Adorable though Nick's irritation could be, she bit her bottom lip to keep from giggling... or laughing outright. Or worse, getting up and showing it to him.

And of course, it did turn out to be the very last thing in the box by the time he'd emptied everything else out. "There you are," he growled. "Finally. Okay, Sara, I'll be right back."

"I'll be right here," she replied, taking another strategically-timed sip of coffee...

He went out into the glass hallways, but of course didn't disappear. So she pulled the box towards her and begun to replace any of the scattered evidence bags inside it that she could reach from where she was sitting. Giggling a little as she went. Definitely a sign of sleep deprivation. She wondered briefly how long it would be before she started to imagine the evidence bags with cartoon faces on them...

Whilst returning the items to the neatly stacked position they had been in before Nick's ruffling, her eyes fell on the name "Veronique Gorsha" written in blue ink on Nick's notepad. She wondered how Brass' search for her was turning out. Or, indeed, if there was anything to learn about her. Maybe she was just a made-up name...

"Okay, Sara, we've got something!"

She looked up at the sound of Nick calling to her. He waved her over with two fingers and a much less grumpy expression on his face. She shook her head to dispel the mock-annoyance and went to join them in the DNA lab.

"You've got something?" she asked upon entering.

"Sure do," said Greg, excitedly. "A name! A name in the database! A good shot in the arm for a screwy case like this one!"

Beside her, Nick shrugged. "That's the way the game plays in a job like this one."

"We do investigate crimes," agreed Sara.

"Yeah, but you guys get to do the fun part," said Greg. "It's gotta be better than testing tubes all day."

"I don't know," said Nick, his lips jutted out both doubtfully and thoughtfully. "I've thought about down scaling to the lab a time or two... Fewer dead bodies."

Sara did a double take back to him. Had he really just said that?

"And it's easy enough work," he continued. "Wouldn't you say, Greg?"

"Uh... I don't know. It's not exactly hard, but like I said, it gets boring."

Nick shook his head, as if to dismiss Greg, and picked at the side of a desk. And Sara watched him for a moment out of the corner of her eye, hoping she was being discreet about it. But she suddenly felt a little panicky. It was hard to imagine the CSI team without Nick. But the way he was contemplating the desk's surface – with slowly softening features – told her that he had been serious. But WHY? Yes, being a CSI had it's downsides, to put it mildly... But it wasn't all THAT bad.

...Was it...? Was it, for him?

Suddenly, she wondered exactly what he did whenever he was off shift. If anything, that is... Whenever she was off, she was usually just catching up on her sleep. But maybe it wasn't that easy for Nick. Maybe the nature of the job kept him up. She thought back to how jumpy and weary he'd been after a suspect had put a gun to his chest, not too long ago, while confessing to the murder of her husband's ex-lover. Mrs. Hendler, the suspect's name had been... It seemed like Nick had really taken it to heart, and thankfully not the bullet from the weapon. Understandable if it had gotten him thinking – she knew it sure would have, had it been her. But enough to scare him off completely?

Standing before her, in the dimly lit environment of the lab at night, he seemed to transform into something... into someone, entirely different. Like she was seeing him through different eyes; through clearer ones. She noticed every detail of him – every line on his face, how bright his eyes were, how honest his expression – as much as she could see on the outside. Thinking about it, it made her feel... weak.

"Nick..."

He looked up with a snap. "What? What?"

Greg bit down on his lip, barely managing to contain the growing grin on his face.

Sara ignored him. "You can't leave CSI," she pressed on. "You're a good member of the team. We need you..."

He smiled, but only formally, it seemed. Only because such situations obligated him to. She wondered if she ought to say more...

But then, he spoke instead. "Thanks, sunshine. But you all would be just fine without my help, I'm sure–"

"–I beg to differ," she started hotly. "I would have dropped somewhere by now, if you hadn't–"

"–Sara." And his smile widened until it looked genuine, while he seemed to riddle out what to say in his head. "Thank you, but that isn't what I mean," he finally said, after a long moment. "I just mean that the team would go on without me, just fine. There's nothing I specialize in here, you know? Grissom has his bugs, Warrick's his best pal... Catherine's got her people skills, and you're... well, you're YOU. Goes without saying..."

The sudden heat rising in her cheeks told her she was blushing a deeper red than she ever had before, without needing to look into a mirror. She ducked her head a little...

"But, what do I do, you know? I, uhm... zip the evidence bags closed with a special finesse?" He threw his hands outward in emphasis. "Nothing, really. I love my job, I really do. But often, all it does is keep me up at night when it's over..."

"That's because you get so wrapped up in it," interjected Greg. "Burn out."

Sara gave Greg the most powerful death glare she could muster. That was NOT helping...

Fortunately, Nick didn't seem to buy it. "Yeah, I've heard that one a few times around here, but I've noticed something: I'm not the only one."

And he cast a flashy wink in Sara's direction that removed the glare from her face. Replacing it with a smile, and another heated blush.

"Just ask Catherine how she feels after she's worked a case involving cheaters and little girls. Ask Grissom about kids, in general." Nick clicked his tongue and batted his eyebrows once, looking at neither of them, and lost in his thought. "You'll never get home. They'll start talking, and the next thing you'll know, it's time for your next shift. But they sure do like to lecture..."

Greg didn't seem able to argue with this one. He shrugged in surrender, and reached for the results of the DNA test, as it had just beeped. While he assembled the report, Sara decided to give a little more; wrapping her arms loosely around Nick's torso, and resting her temple on the side of his arm.

"Okay! So, the DNA under your old lady's fingernails belongs to... Joel Hostings? Who the hell is Joel Hostings?"

Sara lifted her head again, and snatched the sheets of paper from Greg's hand without waiting for an invitation. Her eyes skipped over the paper, looking for the name amidst the cluster of numbers. "'Joel Hostings'," she read when she found it. "The night manager. The bastard!"

It surprised her slightly that Nick was smiling when she looked over at him. "Wow... You were right about him, Sara."

"Yeah, yeah," she afforded hastily. "That's great, Nick. We have to find him!"

"No, 'we' don't have to find him. I need to call Brass and dump something else on his workload."

"But–" she began.

"–Sara, calm down!" he interrupted, more forcefully than she'd ever heard him speak before.

She had once before thrown her hands back in submission to him, but this time she also jumped back a little, too. "Okay," she said, just as she had that once before. "Okay, all right. Fine, Nick. You're right, you're right. Sorry..."

"Good. Now... I'm gonna call Brass, tell him what we found. See if he has any other leads for us. And then, maybe... we go out and have some lunch. Er... well, yeah, I guess it would still be called lunch. We have a lunch hour on nights, don't we?"

"We do in the lab," Greg butted in. "If you were really thinking of joining me in this lonely little room..."

Sara's foot caught Greg in the shin beneath the desk. He bent over sharply and clutched at it, while she had never taken her eyes off Nick. His eyes flashed over at Greg, who was turning red in the face and clearly trying to hold back a verbal indication of the pain Sara hoped she'd inflicted. Choosing this shift to break in her new business heels had been a good idea, after all.

Nick grinned, and chuckled. "I, uh... think it would take a little bit more than that to convince me, there, Greggo."

"Uuuhhh..." he groaned in answer.

"So, while I'm calling Jim, think about where you'd like to go," said Nick to Sara. "On me, and don't worry if it's fancy."

She watched him go, dialing his phone for what felt to her like the millionth time that night. With a token wave and a smirk at Greg, she click-clacked her way out of the lab after him. But turned down the other hall to gather up their evidence and store it in a safe place.

She got the page from Doc Robbins just then. He was done with Janice Kenley's autopsy.


	11. A Monster

The elevator dinged as it landed on the morgue floor.

Nick stepped out of it with the phone still in his hand. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll take care of that. Thanks, Jim." And then he flipped it shut, feeling a weight come down on his shoulders as he did so, as if brought on by the sound of the phone clicking closed.

He was sure Sara was already in with Doc. Or David, which would be worse... But when the door to the morgue hissed closed behind him, he was pleased to see his first guess had been right. There she was, glowing along with the light beside her and staring hazily down at the body spread out before her. She looked up at the sound of his approaching footsteps and cracked one edge of her lips up, in silent greeting.

The smile he answered with was brighter without trying. "I got your message, darlin'. Where are we at?"

"Oh..." sighed Doc, "...where we always begin, with a new victim." He lay a clean, white cloth out on top of the previously-naked victim. "The body of evidence starts with the body, as evidence."

"Mm hmm," offered Nick politely – he'd heard Doc say that enough times before. "And this body is giving us what evidence?"

"Quite a bit," said Sara.

"I'd say so," said Doc. "Or at least some much needed perspective."

Nick leaned forward on his elbows on one of the tables nearby. "On what?"

"On what kind of a bastard the guy you're looking for is," answered Doc. "Let's start with the basics. And the first thing is, time of death: it's sitting at about one this morning. She died very recently, as you both surmised. But it was under far worse circumstances than our first victim."

"This just gets cheerier by the second," injected Sara, bitterly and offhandedly as she flipped her hair back and joined Nick in leaning forward.

"I can't promise that," said Doc. "But Mrs. Kenley, here suffered a lot before she died. There are extreme traumas to the sexual regions of her body. She was raped, no question."

Sara exhaled a sharp breath of air, causing Nick to look over at her. But she was staring at the floor now, and didn't seem intent on lifting her head up anytime soon.

"The actual cause of death was by strangulation, though. Her airways are almost more beaten up than her vaginal area is." He winced down at Mrs. Kenley, and inclined his head to the side once. "I'd be very surprised if she didn't appreciate it, to a degree... by the time it was happening. Because the extent of the trauma suggests that her rapist was not quick about it. Fortunately, though... the evidence suggests he didn't take long to strangle her."

"Escalation effect," said Nick, as a sweet memory from a much less horrifying time formed in his mind.

He did not miss Doc and Sara exchanging looks of puzzlement. At the sight of Sara's furrowed brow in particular, he chuckled.

"Escalation effect," he repeated. "This one time, when I was in college, there was a girl I was getting real friendly with. And eventually, we ended up doing it in the bathroom at school. Fun as hell, but as soon as it ended..."

"...the high wore off," finished Doc. "And I'm betting you scrambled to clean up and put your clothes back on."

"Sure did," confirmed Nick. Then he turned to Sara. "Understand what I mean?"

She flicked her eyebrows up once. "Mm hmm. Tricky Nick, you kinky little devil, you..."

He scratched his chin. "I aim to please, every once in a while."

"It looks like our rapist wasn't, though," continued Doc. "He must've been in a hurry to kill her after the euphoria of his acts left him. And hold on to your hats – you haven't seen this yet. Either of you..." And he took a pair of lengthy tongs from the tool tray set up near the body.

Nick leaned forward a little bit more, and spotted Doc lifting something white off the side table that he had wheeled around behind him. When he turned around, tongs in the air and white object dangling from it, Nick reflexively twitched back. While Sara covered her mouth with the side of her fist.

"This, as you can tell, is a sock," said Doc. "And you'll never guess where I found it?"

Nick wiped his arm across his face, hoping to clear away the smell a little as he did so. "In the victim's mouth," he stated grimly, but matter-of-factly.

"In the victim's mouth, it was," confirmed Doc. A sad tone was beginning to show in his voice. "A considerable ways down her throat, actually. I can't tell you if it was put there to keep her quiet during the forced intercourse... or to assist the killer in strangling her."

"Oh... I think we can assume it was pretty unbearable no matter when he used the sock," said Sara.

"Yeah, I'm with you." The disgust element was beginning to wear off; in its place, Nick could feel himself growing angrier and angrier with each new discovery.

It affected the heat in his body, causing it to rise till he realized there was a drop of sweat rolling off his forehead. And the tone of his voice dropped word by word to a menacing, barely-present whisper.

"The guy was... is... a soulless monster," he stated. "By every definition of the phrase..."

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sara appraising him. Suddenly feeling self-conscious, he exhaled sharply and pretended to be very interested in the side of the table.

"I'd say so," agreed Doc. "If ever there was one."

The sound of a plastic bag opening and something being stuffed in it came to Nick's ears. But he didn't look up while Doc put the sock in an evidence bag and gave it to Sara.

"Anything else?" asked Sara.

"Yeah," said Doc. "Here, I've got some x-rays back. David?"

David seemed to appear out of nowhere, with the x-rays in one hand. He smiled at Sara. "Hi, Sara."

"Hi, David," she answered, and she sounded a little more cheerful when she did.

Nick's mouth twitched.

"Based on these fractures," Doc pressed forward, "I'm betting she was a frequent abuse victim, too. Like your first victim was. No way to tell if it was the same person abusing them, though."

"It probably was," said Nick. "And I bet he's got the kids... God only knows what he might be planning on doing with them..."

"Then perhaps this might help you find them a little faster," said David. "Here. Janice Kenley's cell phone. There's a voice mail on it, too. Here you are, Sara."

She accepted them with another smile. "Thank you much."

"Yeah," said Nick, rather forcefully. "Thank you, David."

"Here, Nick, hold this for me," said Sara.

She thrust the phone into his hand and reached around for Doc's printing powder and brush. Nick laughed once.

"Oh, shut up," Sara commanded immediately. "There might be prints on it."

"I didn't say anything," replied Nick in a mock-defensive tone. "I'm shocked you would make such implications of me, Sidle..."

"Yeah, I just bet you are," she said.

And he was pleased to note, she was smiling wider for him...

"Great. Now give it back." And she held a hand out expectantly.

"Yes, ma'am," answered Nick, with a playful salute. "It's all yours, my little opportunist."

She ignored him this time, as that determination settled on her face that told him and the rest of the world she was working now. And her hunch turned out to be correct! Within moments, she had lifted a beautiful print off.

And she didn't miss the chance to gloat, either. "Ah ha!" She waved it towards him once. "What do you think, Nick?"

"Poor sport..." he taunted back. Then he addressed Doc again. "Anything else?"

"I don't think so," replied Doc. "I think you've got all that Mrs. Kenley had left to give."

Nick raised his head first, and his eyes second. "Okay," he said, with a single nod for emphasis. "Thank you, Doc."

"Yeah," added Sara.

"No problem," said Doc. "And let me know how it all turns out. For now, Sara... you'll be pleased to hear, I'm sure, that I'm going to start on the girl now."

She looked up from the print just as she was sealing the evidence bag closed.

"Nick's told me you have a... special interest in this one. I promise I'll be the utmost in careful," assured Doc.

She turned, dragging her jaw along the floor in the process, to look at Nick behind her.

But he shrugged, "I might have mentioned..." and scratched the back of his head innocently.

She stared at him for a moment, shaking her head and coloring her features – with a look that he couldn't figure between gratitude and exasperation – and he stared back...

And then she turned to Doc and nodded. "Yes, Nick told you right. I, uh... I met her only once, but... sometimes those are the encounters that stand out, you know?"

Doc smiled kindly at her. "Yes, I do know. That's how David, here, came to work with us."

"Really?" asked Sara.

She turned to look at David, who was in the back drawing on some wax paper. He nodded, and grinned.

Nick sniffed. "I never knew that, Super Dave."

"It's true," said David. "I ran into Doc totally by accident, and, well... fresh out of school, and here I was, working in the crime lab!"

"Wow!" Sara sounded impressed. "Very good, David. Good eye, Doc."

"Thank you. I've always prided myself on it."

"It's why you're so good at your job," said Nick. "Now, Sara, whadda ya say to some lunch, now? I'm still buyin'." _Before David starts panting like a puppy again_, he added to himself. Though the mental image actually made him smile a little...

"Sounds great, Nicky. Lead the way."

The halls outside the morgue were quiet, with nothing but the fading sounds of Doc and David back-and-forth-ing about the case. Nick took Sara's robe from her and threw it into the hamper with his own. Where he noticed that the laundry hadn't been done since he and Sara had last been there; because their previous robes were still there.

"Thank you, Nick."

He looked up from his mildly-amusing discovery. "You're welcome," he said automatically. But then paused, and shook his head. "Uh... for what?"

She took a single step closer to him – which was a lot closer in such a small hallway. "For telling Doc Robbins about Penny. I appreciate it."

"You're welcome," he said again, a bit more sincerely now that he understood... "I know how it feels, you know?" Then he offered her his arm. "Shall we?"

She gripped onto it like before, and followed him through the halls towards the elevator. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Nick looked ahead determinedly, and could still see Sara's wandering eye from the corner of his own steady ones.

Suddenly, an idea occurred to him. "So, how long you gonna make David wait?"

She looked over at him and crinkled her forehead, obviously confused. "What? 'Wait'...? Wait for what?"

"Aw, come on, now, Sara, you know what I mean," he teased. "Super Dave's been such a good boy. When're you plannin' on rewarding him for it?"

She laughed. Which would normally make him feel better, when she would laugh even after she'd had that look on her face that had been there a few seconds ago. But this time, it made him feel that much less assured.

Until she spoke, anyway.

"No, no, no," she said hastily. "Sorry, but David's fascination with corpses is a real deal breaker for me."

"Really?" asked Nick in a downtrodden voice.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm old fashioned, I guess." And her grip tightened on his bicep. "I like heroes. ...And sometimes cowboys. Know any?"

He grinned widely as they stepped into the elevator. But shook his head playfully as he pressed the ground floor button.

"Oh, Sara..." he whispered, half-chuckling. "Let me count the ways..."


	12. Electrically Charged

As the elevator came to the main floor, Sara finally remembered to ask: "What did you learn from Brass? Anything?"

"Yeah," replied Nick. "He says we're on our own for now. They're still looking for Mark Kenley, but they don't have the guys to spare for Joel Hostings, too."

Sara sighed sharply out of irritation. "Great."

"So, Brass says we should head back to the hotel, try to catch him unawares," continued Nick. "And if it comes to force, invoke his name."

Sara clapped her hands together and rubbed them. "Sounds excellent!" And she began to storm ahead of him. "Come on, Nicky, show me how you did it when you were a cop–"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

She flinched back a bit when she felt his hand close tightly around her elbow. The force caused her to stumble back against him.

"Hang on there, sunshine. I'll be happy to show you everything I know, but we better eat something first."

At this, something inside her broke, and she actually stamped her foot. "For God's sake, Nick!"

"Hey!" he answered defensively. "We been on this case for so long, I've lost count of the hours! I'm hungry! I know you are, too! Even if you don't want to admit it!"

She rubbed both of her eyes, torn between laughing and screaming. What came out after that short inner battle was another sharp sigh, and then: "I'm fine, Nick. Stop worrying about me all the time."

"I can't help it," he said back, without missing a beat. "You don't take very good care of yourself, Sara. You don't sleep, you don't eat, you don't let anybody help you... You're gonna be sorry if you don't change something about it."

His forward step seemed to be unintentional. But she leaned back reflexively anyway.

"And I don't want you leavin' just because you won't listen to reason. Now, damn it, we are going to eat something!"

"Hey," she retorted, "thanks, but no thanks, Nick. I can take care of myself."

"Really? Would you like to show me some evidence of that?"

"I take days off," she protested weakly. But she already knew that he knew better.

Which he displayed immediately by crossing his arms across his chest. "Is that so? Name the last day off that Grissom offered that you accepted?"

"I took three whole days off my first week here!"

"That's great," he replied. "And you've been here for how many months since then? That's what called, 'burning your candle at both ends'."

For a moment, she was tempted to hit him. So what if he WAS right? She was a grown woman! She could "burn her candle at both ends" as much as she wanted to!

But then a recent lecture from Grissom of the same nature replayed in her mind, and she stayed her burning hand. _"You've gotta let go, Sara..."_ She closed her eyes, and scratched the side of her arm.

"What about the kids?" she tried after a moment. "There's a dead child in the morgue already. And three unaccounted for that are somehow wrapped up in this."

She opened her eyes, and saw that her words had taken a toll on him of some kind. He looked down, and his features softened again.

"Come on, Nick. You know as well as I do: in this job, sometimes we have to just deal."

He lifted his eyes back to hers. "No dice, sweetheart." His tone was much quieter, but no less resolute. "You 'deal' too often as it is. And another thing we both know about this job is: if you're not careful, you end up losing all your humanity. Or worse, depending on how you look at it."

She opened her lips, as if to speak again, but fell quiet at once when he waved a hand.

"Besides, darlin', here's the reality of the situation: they're probably either dead or abandoned somewhere, anyway. He's had them for hours. Whatever he planned on doing involving them, he's done it by now. That's a third sad, harsh truth of the matter: in this job... you can't save everybody."

She diverted her eyes from his as he took another step forward and placed both hands carefully on each of her upper arms. The heat coming from his palms felt like a radiating pulse – warm, and very calming.

After a moment, he turned her head back to him with two fingers on her chin. "But if you don't take care of yourself... you won't be able to save anybody. Understand what I mean now, Sara?"

There was an uncomfortable feeling in her all of a sudden. One that went from zero to sixty in three-point-five. His hands on her arm and under her chin felt cold and unwelcome all at once. And she shrugged out of them and stepped back.

"Alright, alright," she conceded reluctantly. "Fine. Let's go then."

He sighed, seemingly regretfully. "Think of it like this, then, Sara: what's the use in getting ourselves killed because we're not in good shape to fight if we encounter a violent suspect? And besides, who are we to say Joel Hostings and Mark Kenley are the only ones in on this? There could be anybody. Every time we walk out that door, as members of law enforcement, we risk getting attacked. So just try to think of it as being prepared, if it helps you feel better about it."

But she had lost patience – she threw her hands up and looked him in the eye. "I think I would feel better if we just went to the damn hotel, Nick. If you'd just let me make my own decisions, that would be the best option."

But as she turned around to go down the hallway, a set of key suddenly skidded between her feet a few steps away from him. She retrieved them from the floor, then looked back at him with puzzlement.

He shrugged, and his tone turned into one of dejection. "I'm not holding you hostage, Sara. Just lookin' out for ya."

She looked down at the keys, and moved them between her fingers for a second.

"I'll tell you what," he suggested. "Let's go get in the car, and you're driving. If you wanna eat, pick out a place, and we'll go – I'm still buying, whenever we do, anyway. If you're really that eager, head for the hotel, and we'll see what we can find – but grab some ammo first."

The sudden picture that formed in her mind of Nick on a poster for a generic action film brought a smile to her face. Causing the irritation to fade as fast as it had come. Damn it...

"Oh, alright," she repeated. "Here. You'll need these."

He looked confused, but even unready for them, he still caught the keys after she tossed them back to him.

But after observing them for a second or two, himself, he returned her smile. "Grab some ammo, anyway. It's all part of being prepared."

She scratched her cheek. "I'll be sure to do that."

"Then I'm gonna go change into some less uncomfortable shoes. And leave this with Greg and Mandy."

She stepped back against the glass wall as he passed. And watched him go around the corner. That had NOT been a comfortable feeling. Any of it. And come to think, she hadn't ever really fought with Nick before. About anything, big or small. There'd already been something, some kind of argument, with everyone else in the lab. But not him. Her stomach felt turbulent, and she wriggled a little as she began to walk for the coat hook in the lab, attempting to dislodge it. Like it was an unwanted attachment.

It didn't work. As she put on her coat, as she joined him by the door with spare ammo, or as they filed side by side into the dark parking lot of the early morning hours. By then, she felt forced to accept that it wasn't as unwanted as she wished she could believe. That HE wasn't as unwanted as she wished she could believe. In her mildly-contained annoyance, she was seeing him through a red haze. He, who was leaned back in the driver's seat and tapped his thumb on the wheel in time with the generic music that was playing.

It wasn't fair that he could be so fun for her to watch when he was pissing her off so thoroughly. But at least she was fairly comfortable accepting that there was nothing she could do about that much. Something more than she could say for the others she'd met, here in Las Vegas...

* * *

The sounds of a mildly-busy diner were comforting to Nick's frayed nerves. Sara had gone right to a booth by a large window, where he could see her staring out at the city. One foot lazily bobbed itself on the joint of her ankle. She had leaned her chin down into her left hand. Her right hand traced something invisible into the table's plastic surface. His vision became unfocused, and he leaned his head slightly to the side. His eyes squinted... Trying to figure out what the hell she was drawing...

"Sir?"

Was it a giraffe? The way she kept dragging her finger up and down in a long rectangle kind of made him think it was an animal with a long neck. But then again, why did it have to be an animal? Couldn't it have just been a series of random shapes?

"Sir, your coffee's here."

He shook his head rapidly. Then looked over at the pretty blonde behind the counter, and accepted the coffee from her with a smile.

"Sorry. Lost in my own world... Thanks."

She smiled obligatorily, and added: "When your food's ready, we'll bring it right to you."

"Thanks."

He took the coffee mugs between two hands and inched his way carefully across the room to where Sara looking so intently out at the lights. He frowned.

"See something in the sky?"

She redirected her gaze to him. "What?"

"You're lookin' pretty hard out the window," he explained. "Do you see something you wanna share?"

She shook her head. "No. I was just thinking..."

"I could see that," he quipped. "What about?"

He set the coffee mugs down with a light clink, and she dragged one towards her without any hesitation. "The lights."

He paused halfway through the act of taking a sip of very hot coffee. "The lights...?" he questioned, both eyebrows raised.

"Yeah," she confirmed, flipping her hair back with a head movement. "I was looking at them before this whole mess started. When I was about to get to go home. Before Grissom came and shoved the case file into my hand, that is..."

He finished taking his sip. If she had been trying to hide the bitterness in her voice from him, she surely realized she hadn't done a very good job...

"And that came after he ignored me in his office. I guess I was important enough to assign a double shift's case. But not important enough to even say 'hi' to."

In spite of the visible smoke coming off the top of the coffee mug, she took a long drink from it. Nick raised his eyebrows even higher, and blinked in slight surprise.

"Figure that one out for me, oh man of moral authority," she finished, and let the mug drop semi-carefully in her fingers to the table's surface.

Nick watched it fall, and equated its downward motion with the sudden heaviness settling in his chest. His eyes stayed pointed downward as he spoke. He had intended to work up to it. But she looked like she was on the verge of tears. And he suddenly realized – with the wish that he had picked up on it earlier – why she was on such an emotional roller coaster. Exactly the gist of everything he meant to say came out first. Straight-up... and honest...

"Sara, I'm sorry."

She had gone back to staring out the window. But she looked over at him with just her eyes upon hearing this, and made another head movement.

"I'm sorry I made you come here. I know you don't want to be here, you want to be out lookin' for those kids. I understand why. I shouldn't have yelled..."

She turned her head now, to match the angle of her eyes. Which were widened, and still focused on him. It made him feel worse on the inside, and he looked down again. Just to get away from her gaze, that felt so accusatory...

"I shouldn't have yelled," he repeated. "And I shouldn't have given you an ultimatum. I been so panicked that you might leave Las Vegas, I never thought about what I might be doing to encourage you to do it." His hands shook a bit underneath the table – he was grateful she couldn't see THAT. "I'm sorry..."

It looked like she could see the shaky bottom lip, though. Because she furrowed her eyebrows at him.

"Nick..." she said, and paused. "It's all right."

"No," he said right away. "No, it's not. It's not. They don't always... They aren't always... They don't–"

But he didn't know what to say. How does a man describe his friends leaving out one of his other friends? What words does he use?

"–Nick, listen," she said, when he came up with nothing, finally. "Maybe... maybe some of this is my fault. I mean, sure: they could always be more welcoming, but you know what? This is a job. I came here for a job. And they've been nice, as far as all that goes. Professionally, I mean... And they don't always ignore me, it's not like that."

She again flicked her hair behind her eyes... and leaned back down on the palm of her hand, vision going to the table where her other hand was still tracing shapes. "It's just, I keep thinking back to the Laura Garris case."

It took him a moment, but Nick remembered. Laura Garris, a rich man's wife who had been abducted and then dug up out of the ground by Grissom and Sara, alive and well enough for all that she'd been through. She'd also been a liar, but that was besides the point, now...

"I remember when we were all talking about throwing a party for Lindsey, in the break room," Sara went on. And a smile formed, "And you and Grissom both brought the same chemistry sets. But Catherine's comments are hard to swallow sometimes, you know? And that little remark about me just... it kind of stuck. And I guess I understand why Warrick doesn't want to be best friends. I did come to investigate him in a shooting incident, didn't I? But why Grissom? He's the one who asked me if I wanted to stay."

Nick held his tongue by biting down on it loosely. As he recalled, he had asked her if she wanted to stay before Grissom... But that was just friendly conversation, at the time – it certainly would've been to an outsider looking in, anyway... And surely that's all it was to her. To Sara...

"I'd think he'd want to be a little more welcoming," she added with a shrug. "Could be just me, but... you know, when am I going to register as another member of the team with them? And not just another co-worker?"

Nick shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I always just thought of you as another member of the team."

She grinned, but didn't look up from whatever she was drawing on the table. "I know you have. You've always made me feel welcome. Thank you."

He slipped a hand up over the table's edge and put it down on the one she was tracing with. She looked up, then.

"You're welcome," he said. "With me, I mean. And from me, too."

She pressed her lips closed, as if she'd just realized they had fallen open.

"And besides," he reasoned, after an idea had occurred to him, and jutted his lower lip out. "It isn't like you haven't done your fair share of looking out for me, too." He rubbed his thumb on the top of her hand. "Like tonight, for example."

She flipped a bit of her hair out of her eyes. "Is that your way of saying 'thank you', cowboy?"

"No," he said, "but let me help you with this."

She went rigid as a wooden log, while he leaned forward a little with his other hand out. Her eyes followed it tentatively until the rough skin of his fingertips met the softer skin of her beautifully freckled face. So that he could take that stubborn bit of her curly, red hair that kept coming down in front of her eyes, and tuck it a little more securely behind her ear.

With a knowing grin, he withdrew from her slowly and sat back in his seat. "Better?"

Her eyes fluttered open like the lens of a camera. "Yes..." she exhaled, more than said. "Thank you."

"And I don't say 'thank you' through hints, either," he added. "I just say it. Thank you."

Her white teeth shone through her lips in the dim lighting. The bronze-colored light falling on her mixed with the blue and yellows of the different neon signs both in and out of the diner. It accentuated her red hair, which she was now straightening between her fingers with the hand he wasn't still holding.

"Thank you, Sara," he clarified.

Then he lifted her hand and pressed his lips to the knuckles on it, gently.

When she looked up at him, her breathing had visibly sped up, and her eyes were sparkling.

That nervous feeling in his chest and stomach that always accompanied these kinds of situations did not show itself outwardly. Holding himself very steady, very composed... he went to pull his hand back from hers.

Quick as a flash, she closed her fingers around his wrist so tightly that her nails dug in a little. "What's the hurry?" she asked, a slight pant in her voice to match the slight demand in her tone.

"There isn't one," he answered. And he mimicked her earlier act of leaning forward on her palm, gazing at her with purposefully hazy eyes. "No hurry at all..."

She leaned forward in return. "Glad to hear it."

"Here you go," said the waitress cheerfully. "Hamburger and a citrus salad! Enjoy."

In hindsight, Nick would realize that he was glad the waitress hadn't seemed to notice anything. In the actual moment, though... eye-to-eye with Sara, in an almost dreamy looking diner with its low lighting and quiet background ambiance... her presence didn't register for many minutes after she had already left their food and their table. Their table... which, to them, equaled all the world rolled up in one. All that mattered, really...

...was the electricity between them.


	13. A Cry in the Night

It looked like the rain was finally beginning to let up a little bit when they arrived at the hotel. Or at least, she noticed Nick hadn't turned the windshield wipers on as fast as he had before. The building that housed their original crime scene towered up out of the sea of structures before them in the streetlamp lit city. It still didn't look any busier – in fact, if Sara were honest with herself, the lack of activity was almost spooky. The police tape was gone, but there was still an officer posted outside the door. He didn't look all that alert, though...

She followed Nick out of the car, and internally groaned when she stepped right in a puddle – rendered invisible by the low lighting – that splashed the hem of her jeans. She rolled her eyes, and slammed the passenger side door closed.

"Should we bring our kits?" she asked of Nick.

"I don't think so," he answered without too much thought. "If we need 'em, we'll come get 'em. For now, we don't wanna seem to obvious."

It was the whispered, hushed tone he answered her with that reminded her: they didn't want to tip Joel Hostings off.

"Are you loaded?" she whispered back to him.

"Yeah. Are you?"

"Always."

He smiled, and scratched the back of his neck. "That really wouldn't sound very good, out of context."

She smiled, too.

"Let's go," he said.

Their footfalls were somewhat muffled by the wet surface of the blacktop. And thankfully, Sara did not step in anymore puddles. As she watched Nick, she found that he seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of where they were going to be – he swerved in between them effortlessly, without even looking down. It made her shake her head, but she followed in his trail, and made it to the front door dry as a bone. If she didn't count the initial splash, anyway... and if anyone had asked her about it, she would choose to remember it differently, anyway.

The sight of the lobby didn't do much to ease her discomfort. It was still highlighted by the same neon colors as before. And it still looked like someone had just died there. Which... was true, technically. But at least there was someone – alive and moving – behind the front desk. A short, somewhat round black woman in a business suit, who was shuffling some papers. As they came closer, she looked up and smiled warmly. Something Sara found odd, given the circumstances.

"Can I help you?" she offered.

Nick leaned on the desk on one elbow. "Yeah, uh..." he squinted at the name tag on her chest, "Lucille. You sure can. My name's Nick Stokes, and this is my partner, Sara Sidle."

"Hi," said Sara.

"We're with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. We were here earlier, investigating the death of the body on the tenth floor."

"Oh, yes," said Lucille, grimly. "I heard about that. It's just awful, isn't it?"

"It is," agreed Nick. "It's always awful... But we think you might be able to help us figure out what happened to her. Is Mr. Joel Hostings around?"

"Mr. Hostings?" she repeated. "No, I don't think so."

Sara exchanged a quick glance with Nick. "Uhm... do you know when he might be back? We really need to speak with him."

"Oh, I don't know," said Lucille thoughtfully. "He left around an hour ago. Hasn't been back since, far as I know. What's this about? Maybe I could leave him a message."

"Oh, that would be great..." said Nick. He sounded weary... "If you could just tell him we have some follow-up questions about the homicide, we'd really appreciate it."

"Oh, certainly," sighed Lucille.

She reached for a pen from a black, plastic organizer and some sticky notes.

"'Homicide'." She clicked her tongue and began to write on a yellow sticky note. "What a world we're livin' in..."

"Yeah, tell me about it," said Nick.

"Course, you two must be used to it by now," she said, with an incline of her head. "The crime lab. I could never see myself doing something like that."

"It takes a lot," afforded Sara. "It really..." and she yawned, "...does."

"I can imagine," agreed Lucille.

She detached the sticky note from its stack, and then pressed it against the desk's edge by a folder labeled "Memos". Then she sat down in her office chair and folded both of her hands, looking at them.

"Is there anything else I can do for you two officers of the law?"

"No," replied Nick. "No, I think that's all, thank you."

"Anytime," said Lucille. "I'll be here all night, in case you need to come back."

"Thanks. Come on, Sara..."

She could tell he was disappointed. And at first, she shared that sentiment. But as she began to turn and follow him out, it was like a light bulb lit up in her brain. And she spun back around to face Lucille, who had already gone back to work on her papers.

"Excuse me," she said. "I'm sorry, but there IS something else?"

"Oh?"

"Could you tell me where I could reach Janice Kenley?" questioned Sara.

But Lucille frowned, confusedly. "I'm sorry, I don't know who that is."

Nick reappeared at Sara's side, a thinly-concealed grin playing on his lips that told Sara he knew exactly what she was thinking. "Janice Kenley," he repeated. "The housekeeper who found the victim?"

Lucille inclined her head again. "Sir, I been the housekeeping manager here for something like ten years. And I can tell you for a fact, there's been no such person as a Janice Kenley working here in that time."

Sara faked confusion, crinkling her eyebrows. "But then... who did we talk to that found the body?"

"Lemme see..." said Lucille.

She withdrew a small notepad from her pocket, in a fashion that reminded Sara remarkably of Brass. The woman consulted it for a few moments, flipping through its pages a bit, and muttering to herself.

Finally, she looked up at them with a satisfied grin. "You're looking for Veronique Gorsha. That's who was on shift when the body was found."

Sara's jaw hitting the desk was a lot more genuine that her look of puzzlement had been. So, it was the HOUSEKEEPER... THAT was who Veronique Gorsha was.

"Well, do you have an address?" inquired Nick, quickly.

_Good thinking, Nicky_... she commended him in her mind.

"I certainly do," said Lucille. "Hold on right there, I'll go and get it from the list in the office." And with that, she disappeared into the door behind her.

Sara punched Nick in the arm playfully and whispered, "Good job."

"Good job, yourself," he replied. "That was brilliant, Sara."

* * *

It surprised Sara, to say the least, when they pulled up at the address they had received from Lucille for Veronique Gorsha... to see none other than Brass in the front of it. And the look on Nick's face told her he was as lost as she was...

But as they watched, there was a loud banging sound, and Brass suddenly ducked behind the open door of his squad car. Where he had been with his fellow officer in what appeared to be an observatory conversation.

"Oh, that's not good," Nick stated obviously.

He whipped his door open with his legs, and hit the grass with a soft thud. Sara was close behind, drawing her service pistol and clicking the safety off. As they approached at a run, as low as they could be, it became obvious that Brass' partner had been hit.

"Check on him, Sara," commanded Brass calmly, when they came within ear range. "Nick, here."

"What's going on?!" whispered Nick sharply, ducking behind the door beside Brass.

"We think we found the children," Sara heard Brass answering. "Bumped into good ol' Mark Kenley himself at a gas station on our way to hang some fliers. He took a swing, jumped into his car, and lit on out of there. We followed him here."

"This is Veronique Gorsha's place!" hissed Nick sharply. "We got the address from a woman at the hotel, named Luci–"

Two bullets struck the car door and clanged off of it. Eyes flashing between Nick and her own frantic hands making a tourniquet out of the other officer's bloodied shirt, she saw that the two smoking bullet markings were much too close for her liking.

So she concentrated solely on the makeshift bandage she was working on. Her breathing was irregular and panicky, in spite of how calm she felt on the inside.

"You're going to be okay," she reassured the officer, whose name she did not know.

"Yeah," he agreed in a husky voice. "Yeah, I think I am. I think it only grazed my shoulder..."

"It looks like it," she said hurriedly. "Do you have your weapon with you?"

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "It's right here." And to emphasize, he lifted it in his other hand. "I think I've got it from here, go help the captain."

She didn't need telling twice. Springing from her heel, she lunged into the back seat of the car and ducked beneath the window. Where another bullet blew through, and elicited a brief but sharp scream from her.

"Careful, Sara!" she heard Nick calling.

"I'm fine!" she confirmed. "I'm fine!"

"Good! Just stay there for a moment!" came Brass' voice.

She put her hands up over her head. And she wasn't quite sure what happened next, but all she heard were two gunshots, moving away from her. Which told her it was either Brass or Nick who fired.

"Nick! To your left!" shouted Brass.

Sara's eyes peeked over the window's bottom edge in time to see Nick twist the top half of his body and pull the trigger. Two shots, and whoever it struck, it was not lethal. The person rolled from the bushes down a small incline in the ground towards the cop car parked in the gutter.

"Secure her, Sara!" ordered Brass. "Stokes, with me!"

A pair of handcuffs clattered down on the seat in front of Sara, and she took them before bursting from the door. In her peripheral, adrenaline-enhanced vision, she could see Brass and Nick tearing up the front yard towards the door.

When she reached the wounded, she didn't need to look twice to see it was the same woman who she had interviewed when she'd first arrived at the hotel. Slapping the cuffs around her wrists behind her back and rolling her over with one foot, Sara sprinted up the stairs behind Nick and Brass into the dark house's insides.

As soon as she crossed the threshold, she registered the shadowy figure rising in front of her. From behind an overturned dining room table, Sara leapt to the left. A bullet grazed the door frame right where she'd been standing just a quarter of a second before. For a moment, she thought she was in trouble – or moreso than she already felt – when her warmth collided with another's.

But she realized it was Nick even before he seized her with one arm and forced her behind him. Brass was just across from them, ducked behind the couch and waiting for an opportune moment to strike, by the looks of it. There was an archway behind her and Nick, but she paid it no mind: in order for the suspect to be firing at Brass like he was, he had to be in the dining room.

Big mistake.

It wasn't a bullet or a person that attacked them behind. But a rather large, fierce dog that lashed out. It caught Nick's leg and pulled at it, making him lose his balance and tumble to the floor. His gun skidded out of his hand and discharged itself in the middle of the hall.

"Ha!" Sara heard Brass calling out in triumph.

Though she could see the triumphant smirk on Brass' face in her head as clearly as if she were looking him in the eye, she beat the dog on the head with the butt of her gun sharply. It yelped, then turned on her and shoved back. She didn't go down, but she did lose a handle on her own weapon. The dog recoiled... and behind it, Nick was already dragging out to get his gun back.

When the dog charged, Sara kicked at it with an "Umph!" and the heel of her foot. She struck it right in the neck, and it backed off for a moment. But it growled when it looked back up, and charged towards her again, its nails clattering along the linoleum floors.

"Hey!" shouted Nick.

There was another bang, much closer than the others. Then suddenly, the dog went down. Sara flinched back as it yelped again, and rolled over mid-stride to the side of her legs. It didn't appear to be dead, just lying there panting... but it didn't get back up again or react at all.

"You okay, Sara!" said Nick loudly.

"I'm fine!" she repeated from earlier. "Where's Brass?!"

"I'm right here, and he's getting away!" yelled Brass.

Nick spun on his feet and they clamped off down the hallway loudly. The shadow of the suspect appeared just ahead of them, given away by his footsteps as they trampled off in an irregular pattern. There was another door slam – sounding like a screen door – and moments later, Sara found herself in the outdoors again. Just behind Brass and Nick, who had angled himself to be slightly in front of her.

As they skidded around the patio, a bullet pinged off the steel base of a lantern, a short distance away from them. Then a sharp cry pierced the night.

"Dad, what's going on?!"

"Shut the door, we gotta go!" answered a much deeper voice.

"Where is he?!" yelled Brass frustratedly. "WHERE. IS. HE?!"

"There!" replied Nick.

He pointed to their left, and Sara followed his finger down to a back alleyway leading between the houses. Where a loud, old-fashioned looking car started up... and screeched off away from them far faster than they could follow. After the sound of an engine backfiring echoed from around house – causing Sara to duck from the shock of it – the car skidded onto another road, and swiveled so violently, it left trails of burning rubber along the way.

As she stood back up in time to see Brass punching the picnic table, Nick's arms suddenly crushed around her, wrapping her up and lifting her off her feet for a second.

"Goddamn IT!" hollered Brass. "Where is that woman at?!"

Until then, Sara had almost forgotten Veronique Gorsha. That was why they'd originally come. Nick released her from his embrace, but kept one arm around her as he watched Brass running back into the house, still muttering to himself.

As for her... her eyes were on the shimmering tire treads. Where an insane father had just escaped with his children. She frowned when it registered that they shouldn't be shimmering... and looked up in time to see the sun's earliest of early rays... Just beginning to shine over the horizon. The vista of Las Vegas, highlighted by the beginning of dawn.

When she exhaled... head back and eyes to the sky... her breath was visible.


	14. The Misty Vegas Morning

The lab was beginning to sound like its usual busy self when Sara and Brass arrived. As soon as she stepped through the front door, her ears picked up on all the chattering and clattering of the night staff winding down for the day staff to take over. Secretaries hurried to finish processing their papers, technicians scrambled to complete their projects, and officers were headed towards the locker rooms; whilst bantering with each other about things that sounded like typically-stupid male jabber to Sara. And the dim sunlight streaming through the windows highlighted how dirty they were. For a moment, she wondered where the janitors were...

"Alright, I'll meet you over there," said Brass from beside her. "I've gotta make a couple calls. Be ready for interrogation in about ten minutes."

Sara nodded dismissively, and headed at once for the break room. In the reflection of the glassy walls, she caught Brass grinning after her. Hoping he couldn't see her own face in those same walls, she ignored it and pressed on. She could almost hear the heavily caffeinated coffee calling to her from its percolator...

But the closer she got, the clearer the sensation became. She stopped, and crinkled her eyebrows when she was well within earshot. She COULD hear the coffee calling to her. Making bubbling sounds, in fact... and whistling to itself? She could smell it, too... Deciding that she must finally be losing her mind, she sped up her step and entered into the room at something of a charge.

When she saw Greg by the coffee maker, she huffed in annoyance. "You scared me."

He looked back at her, obviously confused. "Sorry."

"No you aren't," she called his bluff.

"Not really," he gave. "How did I even scare you?"

"I thought the coffee was making noises."

She went to the cabinets and grabbed the first mug she could find. Greg was in the midst of pouring himself some coffee when she relieved him of the pot and dumped it haphazardly into her own cup. Some of it spilled all over the counter, but before she would deal with that, she was going to take a drink.

"Gee, thanks, Sara," said Greg sarcastically. "It's not like I was going to drink any of that, or anything."

"There's still plenty left in the pot," she countered with a smirk. "Get yourself some. And do be a doll and clean that up, will you? I'll be late for an interrogation."

Greg's frown disappeared. "Interrogation?" he asked excitedly. "Finally! Who'd you catch?"

"The housekeeper," Sara threw back over her shoulder. "Nick put a bullet in her!"

"What?" she heard Greg asking in puzzlement as she went.

* * *

Behind the two way-mirror, Sara watched as the tending officer slid the suspect's chair out from behind the table. Ms. Gorsha sank into it rather gracefully for a woman with such a large bandage around her leg. She did not look at all sorry for any of the horrible things she could possibly be responsible for. In fact, as she gazed around the interrogation room, she looked mildly entertained. Sara's eyes narrowed themselves at this... Somewhere out there were three boys in the hands of their very dangerous, and apparently crazy father. Their mother and cousin were dead. Their grandmother was in the hospital. And whatever part Ms. Gorsha had played, she HAD played a part...

"Hey," came Brass' hushed voice. "I just got off the phone with Nick. The scene is coming along nicely."

"Good," afforded Sara; but her eyes were still on the suspect... "He's okay?"

Brass looked over at her, and his eyes surveyed her up and down. "Yeah..." he answered after a moment. "Yeah, he's okay."

He paused to take a deep breath, and rubbed his hand over his face.

"Listen, Sara..." he continued after another brief pause, "...I'm sorry about all that."

At this, she turned to look at him, confusion etched into her facial lines. "What?"

"I'm sorry about all that," Brass repeated. "I don't like bringing you CSIs into that kind of thing."

She almost laughed. But the sight of his downcast face showed he was serious, and that seemed to undermine it for her.

"That's work for an officer, and you and Nick had to get involved. Which is not cool," Brass specified. "And as the Captain, I'm responsible for your safety, so..."

She did allow herself a smile, though. And a giggle as she reached out and patted his arm twice.

"It's okay," she replied. "I kind of enjoyed it, actually." But then the image of the dog grabbing Nick's leg flashed through her mind, and she amended: "Except for the damn dog."

Brass chuckled. "Oh, yeah. Man's best friend, I almost forgot. And he's going to be okay, by the way. Animal control has him, no idea what to do with him. He doesn't show any other signs of being violent. They think he might've just been responding to the situation."

"Aw... I hope he'll be all right."

"Well, he survived the bullet, so..."

Sara bit down on her fingernails – it had been her who'd put the bullet in the dog, after all. "Good. What about Officer Prim?"

"He's gonna be fine, too," answered Brass. "Simple operation, won't even be there the night."

Then he looked back to the suspect, and she did, as well. For a moment, neither of them said anything as they watched her pick at her own fingernail. She was the very picture of uninterested, and the longer Sara watched it, the more it pissed her off.

"So what d'ya think?" asked Brass. "Is she our killer?"

"I don't know," Sara answered honestly; honestly, but with a shaky voice... "She's a bitch, though."

"Yeah, I think I guessed that much," chuckled Brass. "She doesn't seem too concerned about the situation."

Sara nodded her agreement. Then another silence...

...that was thankfully short-lived. "Let's go get our hooks into her," said Brass. "She what she's got for us."

"Let's."

With that, they both strode around the corner to the attending officer. Who opened the door for them, and held it.

"Thanks," Brass threw out, briefly and quietly. "Sara?"

She accepted his hand to step over the threshold for a second, and dropped into the first chair she came to, across from Ms. Gorsha. Who had folded her arms and raised her eyebrows like a high school girl who'd been called to the principal's office. For a moment, Sara was reminded of Nick's detailed description of Kristy Hopkins...

"Ms. Gorsha," began Brass. "Ms. Veronique Gorsha..."

He plopped a notepad down in front of him and took one of the pens from what seemed to be a collection forming in his front shirt pocket.

"You, my lady, are in a LOT of trouble..."

"For what? Taking a bullet from Las Vegas' finest?" answered Ms. Gorsha cheekily.

Sara bit down on her tongue and narrowed her eyes even more. Ms. Gorsha was one of THOSE women... The ones that smacked their lips when they talked, as if they thought they were cute when they sounded like they were constantly chewing gum.

"I really don't think that's your biggest problem at the moment," countered Brass. "All the conspiracy charges we're bringing against you would be more troubling to me, if I were you."

Ms. Gorsha raised her eyebrow and looked away childishly. "Don't know what you're talking about, officer."

"You know exactly what we're taking about," snapped Sara, her patience finally at an end. "Jackie Joplin, dead on the tenth floor at the hotel you work for? You lying to us about your name? Being present at a gun fight where two officers were injured?" _And one of them's still trucking back at the scene..._ she added in her mind. "Any of this ringing a bell?"

Ms. Grosha smacked her lips a couple more times. "Depends," was all she said.

"Oh, cut the attitude, lady," whispered Brass dangerously. But his tone rose as he continued to speak. "We wanna know why you lied to us and just what the hell is going on here?!"

Ms. Gorsha finally seemed to have enough decency to show some concern. She threw her hands up and widened her eyes.

"Hey, look, I was just doing what I was paid to do, alright? This whole thing wasn't my idea."

"It wasn't your idea..." Sara incredulously repeated.

"It wasn't your idea, but... what, you played along?" inquired Brass disbelievingly.

"Yeah," Ms. Gorsha shot back. "I did what I was paid to do. Which was go along with it."

Sara leaned forward, closed her eyes and hid her mouth behind her hand. Even though Ms. Gorsha was basically dead to rights, she didn't want to show a laughing expression to a suspect. Especially not one as bratty and irritating as this one. Beside her, she could tell Brass was having a hard time keeping his composure, too. But while she couldn't speak...

...he, at least, he spoke well enough. "And... when guns were involved?" he questioned, in a tone that unabashedly challenged her sanity. "You didn't think it might have been time to cut ties and run...?"

"Wasn't really an option for the kind of money Joel gave me," replied Ms. Gorsha. "Besides, I've used guns before. It's not like I really thought of it as a big risk when he handed me one. And I didn't even fire at your asses! Your southern guy, there just grazed me with one and sunk another in my leg!"

"Sorry. The lines tend to get blurred when we're chasing murder suspects," quipped Sara.

"Whatever," shrugged Mrs. Gorsha. "Not my problem."

"Maybe not, but you know what could be your problem? Mr. Hostings," said Brass. "Where is he?"

"How the hell should I know?" replied Ms. Gorsha without missing a beat. "Haven't heard from him since I left the hotel."

"Why not?" demanded Sara. "What's he gotten himself into that calls for all THIS?" And she made a sweeping hand gesture to indicate the massive mess of a situation.

"Sorry, sweetie, but I can't help you with that, either. I wasn't interested enough to find out. I just took my money and deposited it. That's all I know."

Sara clammed up. It was either that, or fly across the table at being called "sweetie"... Brass seemed to notice her irritation, too – he looked over at her for a moment before addressing Ms. Gorsha again.

"Well, I hope it was worth it," he said. "That money's not gonna do you any good where you're going."

But Ms. Gorsha didn't seem all that bothered by this revelation, either. "I'm sure you know how it goes better than most, Captain," she said. "They take better care of you in prison than in the outside world, these days. And if I got caught, well... I was counting on that."

Sara ground her teeth together, and stood to lean across the table at the simpering suspect. Who raised one serenely-unimpressed eyebrow.

"It'll be much worse than prison if you hurt anybody," Sara said. "Especially those children."

Ms. Gorsha scratched the back of her head. "You're a CSI, right? You chase 'evidence' for a living." Then she leaned forward on her elbows and smiled at Sara in a sickly-sweet way. "You're not gonna find any 'evidence' suggesting I hurt anybody, sugar. 'Cause I didn't. And don't bother reciting the death penalty to me, either. I had a lawyer for a boyfriend once. I learned enough about the law to know I haven't done anything to bring it down on me."

She finished her response with a wink.

Sara took a calming breath. "We'll see."

Then she turned from the suspect and left the room with carefully-controlled steps. She heard Brass sighing before she disappeared around the corner and back behind the two-way mirror, but she didn't care what he thought of her professionalism at the moment. Or lack thereof, she was sure he would say.

To her surprise, he sang a different tune when he caught up with her a moment later. "Good job."

She blinked in pleasant surprise, and jutted her lower lip out. Then smiled, because she realized how much of a Nick mannerism that was.

Brass must've realized it, too. "Say, how much time have you been spending with Nicky? That lip thing is exactly what he does when he was expecting something different."

"Not that much," she argued playfully, all smiles. "He's just catching."

"Very," agreed Brass, smiling as well. "And I bet he misses you back at the scene."

"Yeah," she sighed. "I'll get back there as soon as I check up on our other evidence."

"Okay, then. See you out there."

* * *

"Hey, I just realized something."

She looked up at from the copy of the case file she was reading at the sound of Greg's voice. "What's that?"

"Where's Nick?"

"Nick? He's at the new scene, why?"

Greg shrugged. "This is the first time I've seen you without him since this case started. Anything you wanna tell me, Sidle?"

She ducked her head slightly and glared. "Professional duties called. Not my choice."

He raise both hands in a surrendering fashion. "Okay, okay. 'Mind your own business, Greg'. I get it."

"Thank you." She slammed the folder closed lightly and got to her feet. "Now, speaking of professional duties, what've you got for me?"

"Ah..." He gestured for her to follow him with one finger. "Something interesting, as always."

She couldn't help smiling. She wondered sometimes if Greg realized how much more like a... well, as Nick had described him... like a dork his cockiness made him sound like. Rather than the cool guy thing he always seemed to be going for. Nevertheless, she slid into one of the stools in the lab beside him, reaching out and catching the counter to keep from rolling away immediately afterward.

"Okay... so, I got the sock from Doc Robbins' autopsy," explained Greg. "And I dug into it... well actually, I turned it inside out, and you'll never guess what I found."

"You're right, I won't guess. You'll just tell me."

"Grouchy," replied Greg. "Do you need me to get you some more coffee? Or is it the separation anxiety?"

"The results, Greg."

So he rubbed his hands together. "Epithelials. Belonging to one Mr. Joel Hostings."

He looked at her like he expected her to be surprised, but she wasn't. She rubbed her eyes, and remarked that it wasn't exactly a shock. Given Ms. Gorsha's interrogation...

Greg looked falsely downtrodden. "So, it didn't even help..."

"It could," said Sara. "It means he was there when Janice was raped."

"But we're assuming her husband did it, I thought..."

"Yeah. It was his semen we found on the living room rug. But whoever did it ejaculated outside of her. There was no sperm in her vaginal vault. So maybe it WAS Joel Hostings, and he used a condom that he was smart enough to take with him. We'll probably never know, if that's the case."

"Boy, you'd think more killers and rapists would get smart," mused Greg. "Use a condom for your depraved assaults. And take 'em with you when it's over..."

"Don't say that," scolded Sara. "You'll jinx the world and make my job harder."

"Sorry," Greg apologized. "But there's more: I picked up your materials analysis results from chem. They finished studying the spaghetti sauce, and you'll never guess..."

She glared at him, "Stop saying that," and snatched the paper from his hand as he lifted it.

But without reading it, she already knew the answer.

"Spaghetti sauce with mustard, and little chunks of mushroom in it," she simplified, from the findings on the report.

"Yeah," affirmed Greg. His pager beeped, and he reached for it. "There was spaghetti sauce on the plate. And someone mixed in a little mustard."

"What the hell for?" wondered Sara, shaking her head and frowning at the paper; as if it were its fault that she couldn't make as much sense of her evidence as she wanted to...

"Got me," admitted Greg. "Let me know if you find out. For now, Mandy wants me to stop 'hogging your attention'. She's got something for you, too."

He hooked it back on his belt, and Sara rose during the act of slipping the printouts of their results into her case file.

"Have copies of these ready to give to Nick when he gets back," she commanded offhandedly. "For his copy of the file, I mean."

Greg saluted playfully. "Yes, ma'am, General Sidle!"

She paused by the door and looked back over her shoulder at him, torn between exasperation and amusement.

Then she crossed the hallway into the printing, audio and video lab. "You paged Greg for me from across the hall?" she asked with a sarcastic sigh.

"Yeah, you were taking too long," said Mandy. "I've got something to show you."

She took the printout from the whirring printer behind her and gave it a shake to straighten it out.

"Okay, so here's the deal: your suspect's not in AFIS. Or, at least, this one isn't," said Mandy.

She handed Sara the printout, and dropped back onto her stool. Sara glazed over it until she found the familiar readout of the results. Which was all she really cared about whenever she read any of these complexly written reports...

"It's a match to the second fingerprint from the priority mail?" she asked, turning to Mandy.

"That's right," confirmed Mandy. "So whoever handled your second vic's cell phone also touched that mail."

"I wonder why..." Sara mused, staring off into space for a moment... "And whoever it was, it wasn't Mark Kenley OR Joel Hostings – they're both in the system..."

"That's right," Mandy said again. "Did you listen to the voicemail yet?"

"The what?" asked Sara. "There's a voicemail on the phone?"

"Yeah," said Mandy. "See, that's what this little icon flashing on the top–"

"–I know what it means," interrupted Sara. "I just... had forgotten that David told me there was a voicemail on it, is all. It's been a long night... and don't tell Grissom, he won't understand." And she glared darkly as her words sunk in to herself. "Believe me..."

Mandy pretended to zip her lips. "Can I hear it too, then? In exchange for your secret?"

Sara grinned, and flipped the phone open. "Yeah, come here."

They stepped around the desks to the audio analyzer. And within moments, the phone was hooked up. After she and Mandy had applied their headphones, Sara highlighted the play button with the pointer and clicked it.

It was from Joel Hostings. "Hey... listen, Janice? Look, I'm sorry about all this, okay? But I just, I... I can't do anything about it, you know? She's not very happy with me... with ANY of us. And I can't stop her, I have to do..." and then he sighed, rather regretfully it actually seemed... "...I have to do what she says. I just have to. I hope you and the kids will be okay, Janice, I really do. Just hang in there, it'll all be all right eventually. I promise. Okay..."

Sara frowned in thought at the screen for a moment... then removed her headphones and dropped them on the desk.

"He said 'she'," she noted. "He has to do what 'she' says..." She took the phone from the slot it was plugged into and dropped it back into its evidence bag. "So the unknown print on the phone is probably a female's. Since it's not Janice's; she's already in the system."

"Sounds reasonable to ME," said Mandy placatingly.

"Mm hmm... But I need to get back to the new scene, Nick's probably wondering where the hell I am."

Mandy smiled. "I don't think so, but before you go...?"

Sara stopped by the door and looked back with eyebrows raised in interest. "Yeah?"

Mandy's tone became soft and understanding. "Doc Robbins hasn't finished the little girl's autopsy yet."

Sara blinked, and stood up very straight as if to steel herself. "Okay," she stated her understanding of this knowledge. "And...?"

"And I hear this one's... kinda personal for you, so–"

"–thanks, Nick," Sara interjected–

"–I just wanted you to know, I did receive her prints from the morgue. David brought them to me, and I tested them right away."

She reached over to her pile of yet-to-be-distributed printouts and gave the top one to Sara.

"Those prints on the plate WERE the little girl's. They match..."

Sara regarded the piece of paper with hesitation for a second... But after taking a deep breath, she accepted it, and slipped it into her folder with the other results.

"Thanks, Mandy," she said simply. "Have copies for Nick when he gets back, too." She patted Mandy's shoulder, and turned away gracefully. "He'll want them..."

"Will do," she heard Mandy saying, before she got too far away to hear her.

With another weary sigh... what felt like the hundredth one that night... she reached into her pocket to check that the keys to the work car were still there. And since they were, she proceeded down the hall and out into the parking lot without stopping. Where she welcomed the cool, comforting, relieving feeling that the breeze – gracing the misty, Vegas morning with its presence – brought as it blew all over her.

* * *

"Nick..." she sighed, smiling when she saw him.

He was crouched down and hunched over his kit, just as Brass had said he would be when the latter had pointed her to him. He looked up and grinned back, white teeth again shining at her.

"Hey there, princess. How'd the interrogation go?"

She raised an eyebrow. "'Princess'?"

"What? No good?"

He stood up and placed both hands on his hips, inclining his head to the side to emphasize his question. But she just shook her head slowly.

"No. Stick with 'sunshine'. Or 'darlin''. Those are good."

"Those you like, huh?" he affirmed. "I can do that, but seriously, how'd the interrogation go?"

"Not very well," she answered with a sigh, and leaned against the door frame with her arms crossed over her chest. "Ms. Gorsha is... unhelpful, falsely self-entitled, and a brat the likes of which I haven't seen since my days in high school."

"That bad, huh?"

"That bad," said Sara.

They both looked away from each other, and she heard Nick sighing in disappointment. Or annoyance, she couldn't quite tell which... But she figured the former, because she was sure by now he was tired enough to be as desperate for some kind of lead that would take them closer to the end of this as she was.

"Did you do any better?" she asked after a second, to break the awkward silence.

"Uhm... I think so." He indicated all the evidence he had gathered up around him. "I got fingerprints in blood, and a swab of that blood right, uh... here." He lifted the bag and gave it a little shake. Then he dropped it onto the pile and rummaged around some more. "There's an empty gun here... And some weird colored fibers that were stuck in it... And then another blood pool out on the back porch, which I, of course, also swabbed."

He grinned like he was pleased with himself. And watching him from where she was, in the low but growing natural light, she couldn't say anything for the feeling that built up inside her. All she could do was smile, too...

"But I'm glad you're here," he continued. "For more reasons than the obvious one. There's still the basement left."

She straightened up and gestured generally. "Well, by all means, Mr. Stokes. Lead the way!"

He nodded, and extended an arm to help her step over the evidence. As she accepted it, she remembered Brass had done the same thing outside of interrogation earlier...

"Do I come off as incapable or something?" she questioned.

He looked at her like he was confused, for a second.

"Brass offered me his hand earlier," she explained.

Nick laughed. "I don't think 'incapable' is the way to describe it. Maybe Brass is secretly from Texas."

The door to the basement obviously hadn't been used very much. Even with his rolling muscles, Nick had to pull at it several times to get it to budge. And the stairs creaked so loudly, a cat would have been easy to hear. But when they got to the bottom of the steps, Sara noticed that the air was much crisper than it should have been, for such an infrequently used area...

The reason for that became apparent when Nick suddenly jumped, and exclaimed: "Whoa!"

The homeless man curled up underneath the open window screamed as Nick's flashlight beam fell on him. "Hey!"

And Sara's hands banged against the water softener. She gasped loudly and repeatedly for a few moments as she calmed down. "Dear God...!"

Then they were all quiet, as Sara was sure the two men in the room were trying to slow their heartbeats as much as she was.

"Sir... what are you DOING down here?" demanded Nick.

In a high-pitched voice that Sara had never heard him use before. She pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. The only thing more endearing than his annoyance was his nervousness.

"This is my spot, it is!" retorted the homeless man wildly. "Ain't nobody else gonna lay claim to it!"

Nick flashed an incredulous glance back at her over his shoulder. She covered her mouth when he looked away again.

"Okay, okay," he patronized. "Just tell us your name, we're not here to hurt you."

"Like hell you're not," answered the man. "I see them guns hanging off your hips."

"These are for dangerous people," reasoned Nick. "Are you dangerous?"

The man stopped at this, and looked away uncomfortably. "No..."

"Then we've got no reason to use them," said Nick. "Tell us your name, sir."

He hesitated, and his eyes went to the open window, as if he was gauging his chances of escaping through it before Nick or Sara could catch him.

But he must have decided those chances weren't good, because he looked back at Nick and answered him. "Frank."

"Well, Frank, my name is Nick."

Then he pointed to Sara, who waved at Frank in a manner that she hoped was friendly rather than mocking.

"This is Sara. We're criminalists. And we're here looking for evidence in a murder."

"'Murder'?" Frank's eyes widened, and he looked between them. "Is that what all that gun firing was about?"

Another incredulous look. This time with his mouth half open. Sara had to bite down on her index finger, but was unable to completely suppress a single laughing sound that escaped through her lips.

"You mean, you heard all that?" asked Nick.

"Uh huh."

"And you're still here?"

"Hey!" replied Frank defensively. "It's hard to find a good place to sleep some nights! Nobody ever comes down here 'cept for me! I wasn't gonna give it up!"

"Okay," said Nick, a hand out in a calming motion. "Okay, sir. I didn't mean anything by it. It's just, most people I know would probably haven got the hell outta dodge after something like that."

Certain that she was reasonably under control, Sara chose this moment to add to Nick's plight. She stepped forward next to him and pulled her radio off her belt.

"Tell you what, Frank: we have a detective captain outside in the front yard. I'm gonna call him and have him come here, okay? He doesn't want to hurt you, either – we just have some questions about what you witnessed."

"That's right," reassured Nick. "Captain Brass will take good care of ya."

"Oh, I bet!" exclaimed Frank, suddenly enthusiastic. "And so will the county, for at least one night! Go ahead, give him a call!"

Still trying to hold in her laughter, Sara signaled for Brass, and stood by with Nick to watch Frank being taken out.

Once they were gone, it turned out that Nick was a much better actor than she was. Because as soon as the coast was clear, his whole body shook with the laughter he must've had to really work to have kept in.


	15. Loose Ends

In spite of the early hours, it was heating up quickly out. Nick leaned back into the cool metal of his chair in interrogation with a very unprofessional sigh before turning his attention fully to the suspect. Or lack thereof, he supposed... It would be very hard even for Grissom to imagine this opportunistic, largely unaware, completely harmless homeless man as a killer, evidence be damned. Still, it was amusing seeing the grin on Frank's face as he watched Nick settle into the chair opposite him. He folded his arms across the raggedy t-shirt on his torso and cocked his head to the side, as if to ask when they were going to get started.

Nick cleared his throat and leaned forward on his elbows, hands folded in front of him. "So... Frank... You wanna tell me what happened?"

Frank's shrug may have been nonchalant, but his tone was surprisingly serious. "I have no idea what really happened. I've been sleeping down there nice and comfortable for a few nights. Haven't heard a soul around, much less seen anything in that time. I used to watch this woman with blonde hair coming in and out at times. Never talked to her, just waited till she was gone. Then I'd open the window and slip in. Nobody could've been the wiser, 'cause nobody came to bother me..."

Nick squinted. "And I hate to bring up ancient history, but... the gunshots...? You really don't count those as a 'bother'?"

Frank squinted back. "Not really, Mr. Stokes. See, when you're on your own... you just don't worry 'bout those kinda things. All you're really interested in is... where you're gonna sleep."

Another nonchalant shrug... and Nick's eyes angled down as the man's gesture reminded him how commonplace concerns like these were to Frank. He cleared his throat and adjusted his shirt.

"Frank, um... the deal is, we're looking for a murderer. Possibly multiple murderers, truth be told. And somehow, the woman who lives in that house got mixed up in all this. So my problem, you see, is... your presence there asks a lot of questions. Especially since I was a part of that gunfight you heard."

The learning of this knowledge seemed to perk Frank up a little bit. He leaned forward on his elbows to match Nick and scratched behind each ear.

"You were all wrapped up in that one, huh?"

"Yes, sir. Yes, I was... and I'm here to tell ya, it was brutal. Got bit by a dog, too."

He lifted his leg up and balanced one foot on the edge of his chair. Enough to make his knee visible over the table's edge, where the bite marks could be seen through the holes in his pants.

Frank raised his eyebrows and made an 'o' with his mouth. "Harsh... But I'm sorry, Mr. Stokes. I'd love to help you out, you been real nice to me. Especially for a cop–"

"–I'm not a cop, now," Nick hastened to interrupt, both hands up–

"–you're in law enforcement," Frank cut across him. "And I've had some bad dealings with the law before. It's how I... ended up here. Sorry, but it's the way it's been for me."

He looked away uncomfortably for a second, sniffling once. Nick winced for the momentary fear he might've made the man cry...

But Frank looked up as resolutely as ever. "But that don't mean I want a killer to be out there running loose. I can tell you, the only time I've ever heard other people in the house at the same time as me was a couple of nights ago."

He leaned forward conspiratorially. Nick did as well.

Frank dropped his voice to a whisper. "There were two men there. And two women, it sounded like. And they was talking about a... a..."

Nick inclined his head to the side. "A what?" he asked when Frank didn't say anything for a few seconds.

"A plan. A plan to get money."

Nick nodded, lower lip jutted out and fighting the urge to laugh again. "Sounds like a lot of people in Vegas," he couldn't resist adding.

But he regretted it as soon as he'd said it. His joke didn't go over Frank's head. The homeless man narrowed his eyes and sharpened his tone. Enough that it felt like a splash of icy water to Nick's face.

"Even in Las Vegas, siphoning money from a family's business is uncommon enough to catch someone's attention, Mr. Stokes."

"Nick."

Frank's eyes loosened as slowly but surely as his grip on his arms did... and as his face softened.

Nick chewed on his lower lip for a moment; a habit he had picked up since getting into law enforcement when he needed to calm himself at a moment's notice. "Call me Nick," he insisted.

Frank's eyes rolled around the room slowly in obvious consideration. Nick took a deep breath and sat up straight.

"Okay, then," Frank said after another pause. "Nick. Even in Las Vegas, siphoning money away from a family business is uncommon enough to catch my attention."

Nick grinned and sat up straight. "Thank you much, sir. What kind of family business we talkin' about here?"

"I think I heard the name, 'Kenley computers'," said Frank thoughtfully. "One of the women there said it at least three times. They were talking about... running away, or something like that." He sucked in a deep breath. "And then there's this."

He reached into his pocket, and for a second Nick was afraid he was going to pull out a gun. It had happened before... and the officer who was shot lost his life in the interrogation room, right where Nick was sitting. It had been his first week after his transfer to Vegas, too... He was glad to still be a CSI Level 2 for a while, there...

But what Frank produced was a piece of paper. "I'm not a thief, Nick. I have to get creative sometimes, but I'm not a thief."

Nick contemplated reminding him that encroaching on someone's personal property the way Frank was could easily be called thievery. But in the wake of his previous slip up, he decided against it.

"I did, however, think it was justifiable to go looking through the garbage after they left. See if I needed to get out of there to protect my own skin, you know? And this is what I found there. Was the only thing left in the can, actually..."

He gave it a light toss, and Nick's eyes followed it till it came to a sliding stop right in front of his arms. He looked up at Frank for a moment and nodded in thanks.

"I'll get it back to my department's lab," he said. "If there's anything on here that will help us catch 'em, we'll find it, Frank."

He stood up and withdrew a single glove from his pocket. The note seemed to taunt him, almost, as it lay there... He narrowed his eyes at it as if it were its fault that he felt antagonized by an inanimate object...

"Hope so, Nick."

Nick looked up at the soft tone of Frank's voice with wide eyes. Frank seemed to struggle to remain composed as he continued. But his voice still shook a little.

"There's enough of that bad stuff out there already. Need more people doing what you're doing to make it better for the decent folk."

Nick smiled widely and chuckled once. "Thank you. I hope I am... And I hope you get yourself to a better place someday..."

Frank sniffled again, as if to say that it seemed unlikely to him without actually saying it. But he smiled up back at Nick anyway, and bobbed his head once. And although he wished his message had been better taken, Nick returned the gesture before turning and exiting the interrogation room. Where Brass and Sara were standing by the two-way mirror with approving looks on their faces.

"Hey," Nick said. "Where are we at?"

"Much better now," said Brass. "My guys are after Mark Kenley."

"Need any help with that?" questioned Nick right away; he hadn't felt this kind of a burning need to catch the bad guys for a while now...

Brass chuckled at Nick's eager tone. "No, thanks, Nicky. I think we got it. He must be getting desperate."

"What makes you say that?" inquired Sara.

"He's making such stupid mistakes now, they don't even need MY help to find him. Much less you busy guys here at CSI. Me thinks it's only a matter of time now..."

"Good," sighed Nick wearily. "'Cause I am TIRED of this bastard..."

"Yeah, join the club," quipped Brass. "We've got jackets. But what's next for you two?"

"Well..." began Nick thoughtfully, "...we have more evidence to look over. I'm gonna take this note, get it analyzed. See if anything in it puts some context around any of the other pieces in the puzzle we haven't placed yet."

"Sounds good," said Brass. "Then while you're doing that, I'm gonna go find this 'Kenley computers' and see what I can dig up there."

"Ooh, I want to go," Sara chimed in.

"Alright," agreed Brass without missing a beat. "Could be useful, in case we need to collect any evidence."

But Sara turned to Nick. "You'll be all right here?"

"Of course," he replied, and scratched the back of his head. "Why wouldn't I be?"

She smiled in response.

"Excellent," said Brass. "We've got a plan. See you later, Nicky, huh?"

And with that, the two of them set off away from him down the hall. Nick watched them go for a moment, his hands in his pockets. Particularly Sara... who seemed to walk with a little more gusto in her step. Her hands swung kind of wildly back and forth as she took over-exaggerated steps after Brass. Her feet were bouncing a little off their heels every time she lifted them. He smiled as he allowed his vision to roam freely from those bouncy heels of hers, up her snug-looking jeans, and to the base of her jacket.

It was there that he realized she was staring back at him over her shoulder. The heat of a blush flooded his face, and he cleared his throat in a vain attempt to straighten up. She shook her head slightly... then they traded winks just before she disappeared around the corner with Brass.

* * *

It was to Nick's general distaste that he entered the materials lab to find Ecklie pouring over some evidence of his own. He stopped by the door way and surveyed the day shift supervisor for a moment, with much less pleasure than he had done on Sara.

Ecklie was tall enough, but his build reminded Nick heavily of a stereotypically-portrayed child molester. His shoulders were wide and flat, his balding hair was shaped (sort of) into the creepiest "V" shape... He was dressed like one of those quiet people members in law enforcement usually advised other people to avoid... with his loafers, his sweater vests, and his badly-patterned ties.

As he shook his head, he hoped quietly that it was unnoticeable, and stepped into the materials lab with his remaining evidence. Ecklie barely looked up when Nick set the bags on top of each other on the opposite end of the table.

"Stokes," he greeted stiffly.

"Ecklie," Nick returned equally as stiffly.

And that was it. The extent of the interaction between nights and days shifts. There'd been some other people on days that Nick had liked before. A woman, in particular... had turned out to be gifted off the field, as well. Hopefully, Ecklie was still unaware of that one...

The evidence piled up significantly, even with all the progress they'd made. As he read along the list, what jumped out to Nick were the loose ends. He quietly thanked his lucky stars Grissom wasn't there: nothing seemed to irk their bug-loving supervisor more than an unfinished puzzle. It was with this in mind that Nick selected their newest loose end: the note he'd gotten from Frank. Before he'd make the obligatory rounds to Greg and Mandy for prints and DNA, best to check for prints first, was it not? He thought so...

But it turned out there weren't any. On the note, anyway... Several spray-downs had yielded nothing. So he held it up to read it in the growing light of the lab, now that he was certain no evidence would be contaminated by doing so. It wasn't particularly helpful, though – all it said was _see you there_ in a curvy handwriting that Nick could tell was a woman's without having it analyzed in detail. He would note its condition and present the photos of it if it even came up in the trial, but for now it was of no use to him. Before splitting the DNA and existing print pieces apart, he shoved it back into the bag and zipped it closed more forcefully than was probably called for. Which was enough to make Ecklie frown up at him. Be it in confusion or false irritation, Nick could not tell.

Rather than engage, he took the swabs of blood and the lifted prints from the back door handle from his pile. For a moment, he wondered about leaving his evidence alone with Ecklie – it wasn't beyond the day shift supervisor to go digging into things that had nothing to do with him, Grissom had always warned. But given how tired he was becoming, he instead decided to remind himself again that Grissom was not there.

"Hey!" greeted Greg over-enthusiastically. "This time, it's you without Sara..."

Nick arranged his face into a half-frown, half-smile. "What?"

"Sara was here earlier," explained Greg with a teasing tone to his voice. "She missed you, I think."

"She knew where I was," deflected Nick. "She was just glad to get away from the scene, I think. And this time, it's my turn, so I've got something for you. Blood from a door handle, here... and blood from a pool on the back porch. Small pool, so whoever left it is probably okay..."

"That's two things," Greg protested.

"And I trust you can handle it," Nick retorted.

His hand was already on the handle to the print lab's door. He flung it open perhaps a bit melodramatically and flung the prints across the table.

"Please?" was all he said.

"You got it. Looking for anything in particular?"

"Oh, just the usual. And don't worry about the blood, I already got some to Greg."

She nodded at him before he turned to get back to the materials lab. When he came in, Ecklie was gone. He scratched his chin and allowed himself a sigh of relief, just to have some kind of sensory stimulation.

_Now, where was I?_ he asked himself. _Oh, yeah! Loose ends..._

Which reminded him: where had that wrench gone? It had been a few hours ago, but he still hadn't forgotten the exemplary he'd been going through. It seemed funny to him how many lifetimes ago that felt... Before Janice Kenley had turned out to be an innocent victim in all this... Or so they knew, presently...

Not surprisingly, the wrenches matched perfectly. Not only with each other, but also with the photo of Jackie Joplin's bruising. Someone had hit her with a wrench, and that someone was probably Mark Kenley. His prints were on the other wrench after all, and that one had been used to strike his wife.

But when it came to the first victim – Nick's original case – there was no proof, so again: he felt frustration creeping up on him, because his actions had served little purpose. Except to relieve his churning mind, of course... and he supposed such a thing was an important part of keeping it together on this job... So he he supposed he felt a little better bagging them back up and dumping them into the box.

"Hey! You found an easy one, I've got the results for you."

He turned to see Mandy standing in the doorway with his printout, as well as several others. Though he accepted the top one, he was surprised when she began to hand him the others, and it showed on his face.

"Per Sara's orders," explained Mandy, though Nick had asked no question. "She thought you might want to have them."

"Oh!" exclaimed Nick, a grin forming on his face. "Of course she did... And of course I would!"

Mandy paused in her paper shuffling, and her eyes flickered back and forth between Nick's a few times. Then she clicked her tongue and deposited another stack of sheets of paper into his hands.

"What?" he called after her defensively.

"Absolutely nothing, don't trouble yourself!" she called back.

"What's nothing?"

Nick spun in the other direction, this time finding Greg in the opposite door. The lab was one hell of a structure...

"Oh, Mandy's teasin' me, I guess..." he replied.

"Oh? About Sara?"

Greg's previously-questioning expression turned into an annoyingly-knowing one. Nick inclined his head forward and glared at Greg over the bridge of his nose.

"Okay, alright, Jesus," Greg hastened to say. "I was just bringing your DNA results, don't shoot the messenger."

Nick folded his arms and eyed Greg wearily; most new information pertaining to this case had turned out to be something unpleasant, and he wasn't confident that this one would be any different. "Okay," he sighed in an attempt to steel himself for it. "Lay it on me, Greg."

"The blood on the handle comes back to Mark Kenley."

At this, Nick was more pleasantly surprised. "Really? You're sure?"

"My DNA machine did this, dude," said Greg, as if that ended all doubt. "I'm positive."

Nick began to sort through Mandy's stack of printouts. "Well... the print in the blood came back to..." – he paused, and shuffled them all around several times before remembering that the current results were the ones on top; GOD, he was weary... – "...Joel Hostings?"

Like Greg, he did a double take.

"Joel Hostings?" repeated Greg. "His fingerprints in Mark Kenley's blood?"

Nick scanned over the paper several times to make sure he was seeing it correct. And after the fourth time, he was forced to admit that he was.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, and he had to have been there recently, too. Because that blood was new, so it was left there recently."

"So, Joel Hostings is running around with Mark Kenley's blood on him..." Greg stated, more for clarification's sake than anything else.

"Looks like it," said Nick. "No idea why, but I'm sure we'll find out. What'd the other blood come out to? From the pool on the back porch?"

"Oh," said Greg. "Yeah, that one's a little more and less interesting at the same time."

Nick leaned on one hand and made a "hurry-it-up" gesture with the other.

"Okay, okay!" growled Greg. "The blood in the pool comes back to a Jason Joplin."

There it was: the unpleasant new information.

"Jason Joplin..." said Nick. "Joplin... That's the same last name as our first victim."

"Yeah," said Greg, "that's the interesting part."

Nick reached for his phone on his hip as a matter of instinct. But it was gone.

"Where'd I put my damn phone?"

"What? It's on the table in the materials lab," said Greg. "Why?"

"I better call Sara," responded Nick. "Tell her we got a new lead, see what Brass can dig up with all his fancy police work."

"Sara can't find them for you," Greg pointed out. "Why call her?"

"Oh, that?" asked Nick. "That's just for fun. She'll want to know we made progress."

Then he clicked his tongue and flipped open the phone...

* * *

It was a considerable distance from the Las Vegas Crime Lab that Brass came to a stop in front of a brightly-colored shop with obvious, cartoony looking technology painted all over it. The sign above the door read "Kenley Komputers".

"Oh, that's cute," she said. "You gotta love it when they replace the proper spelling with letters that sound the same."

Struck by its stupidity, Sara looked over at Brass to see if he was thinking the same thing. Apparently he was, because he was staring right back at her with an incredulous look she could only imagine matched her own.

"Wow..." seemed all Brass was able to say. "This is gonna be like grilling the Pillsbury Dough Boy for information about who killed the Trix Rabbit."

"Can't argue there."

And the inside was even worse. As much as Sara enjoyed the blast of cold air that hit her upon stepping over the threshold, the interior decoration was twice as headache-causing as the exterior. Brass was all business, storming right up to the only counter in the place and banging his hammy fist down on the customer service bell. But she folded her arms around herself and looked around at the computer monitors with speech bubbles advertising cheesy self-promotions.

"My God, this is horrifying," she muttered to herself.

Around the only corner in the place, there was a young man leaned up against a very sturdy-looking billboard depicting a turtle typing on a computer keyboard at a business desk. He flashed his eyes up at her when she stopped at the abruptness of his proximity.

"Sorry, ma'am," he apologized in a thick voice. "Didn't mean to bump into you."

"Oh, no," said Sara. "No, I think it was my fault. I was just, uhm... admiring the decorating."

He chuckled. "It's scary stuff, isn't it?"

"Definitely," she agreed. "Definitely... But it's nice to meet someone with manners in Las Vegas. I'm Sara. And you are...?"

He looked up at her and smiled – a small smile, but a very white smile that reminded her so much of Nick.

"Jason," he said.


	16. Burning Feeling

Brass didn't appear to be getting very far with the store manager. His name tag identified him as a Henry Kenley, and though he was trying to be helpful (or acting like it, anyway), he seemed completely at a loss for words at what he was being told.

"I'm sorry, Captain Brass," he said for the millionth time in two minutes, "I just don't know what happened..."

Brass' head fell a little as he sighed in frustration. Sara fought back a giggle by biting down on her index finger.

"Okay, then," Brass tried again. "How about this guy. Know him?"

Sara rolled her eyes and turned away.

"Sounds like a pretty crazy situation," said Jason. "You guys really cops?"

She shook her head. "I'm not. I'm a member of law enforcement, but not a cop, technically."

He eyed her up and down. She felt like telling him to piss off for a second when she realized that he was doing so appreciatively.

"What do you do in law enforcement?" he asked after a moment.

"I'm a forensics investigator," she answered. "A CSI. I collect evidence from crime scenes and analyze it."

He nodded, lower lip jutted out. "Sounds cool. What is it, like, the funner part of law enforcement?"

"No," she laughed. "It's all pretty much a wash. But it's a job that has to be done, and I like it, so..." She shrugged.

He made a so-so gesture with his hand. "I 'spose it is. And if you're doing what you love, you know...?"

"Right," she agreed. "That's the important part."

For a moment, neither of them said anything. Sara looked over at Brass to check in on his progress.

"Joel Hostings," he was saying. "Manages the hotel..."

She shook her head and turned back to Jason.

"So, what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he said. "As much as I can. Very handy, my mom tells me..."

But as he said this, his face fell a little. He sighed, and scratched the back of his head.

Sara frowned. "It... sounds like a compliment to me," she said. "Everything okay?"

He smiled formally, but it was obviously disingenuous. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I mean... you know, for now. But I'm thinkin' about the future, you know? Sometimes that's scarier than the decorations in here are..."

"Is that why you're in here?" she asked teasingly. "Get away from the scariest with the scarier?"

"Something like that," he answered, with no response to her joke. "Problem is, my mama and I had a... a fight. See, she works real hard, but... sometimes it just isn't enough."

Sara's thin smile faded.

"I was over there 'bout twenty minutes ago – where she works, I mean – but she just... don't get it," he continued.

"What doesn't she get?" asked Sara.

"No, no," said Brass in the background. "No, Veronique Gorsha was her name..."

"Never heard of her, Captain Brass, I swear."

Jason made a movement with his face as if he were trying to sniffle, but no sound came out. "Mama doesn't get paid enough where she works. She don't get enough credit, if you know what I mean."

Sara nodded. She could understand this... It seemed like a common enough problem in the workforce. One she couldn't help feeling she had faced last night with Grissom.

"My dad's a real ass," Jason continued. "He don't pay us no money, never gave us anything while I was growing up. She raised me right, with everything she could."

Sara narrowed her eyes thoughtfully and chewed on her bottom lip. "Then why were you fighting this morning?"

His lower lip shook. "Don't know..." he admitted.

"Listen to me, sir, I understand you have nothing to do with all this," came Brass' borderline pleading voice. "I'm not looking to lay any of the blame on ya. But we're really up shit creek without a paddle, so if you know anything–"

"Yeah, sounds about right," interjected Jason. "'Without a paddle.' Isn't that the way?"

Sara shrugged again. "Not always. Sometimes life takes a turn for the better. Really."

He smiled. "Yeah, it does, don't it? I mean, it's not all bad."

For some reason, his encouragement made her smile too. "And it's up to us to decide how we live it. Why don't you go find your mom and apologize? Make it up to her, somehow."

He drew in a deep breath and stood up straight. "You know what? I think I might just do that. I'm outta here."

But when he reached the door, he stopped in the act of opening it and looked back.

"Hey... thanks for asking, uhm... Sara. Sara, right?"

"That's right," she laughed. "And you're welcome. Good luck."

He made a waving motion and strode out onto the sidewalk. Across the street, he broke into a jog. She watched with a feeling of satisfaction. Maybe Nick had a point... Sometimes the best way to go might just be the most affable.

"Alright, then, thanks for your time," said Brass hurriedly.

"No problem," replied the manager. "Sorry I couldn't be of more help."

"That's okay," sighed Brass. "It's all good."

Her phone rang, sounding harsh and loud in her reverie. She reached for it with a prominent out breath and snapped it up to her ear.

"Hello?" she demanded of it.

"Hey, Sara. It's Nick."

"Oh," she amended. "Hi, Nick. Find anything?"

"Yeah. Yeah I did, actually. The wrenches match each other, and the bruising on Jackie Joplin."

"No surprise there," she countered with a laugh in her voice. "Is that all you've done with your time, Nick?"

"No," he replied. "In between dreaming of you on the break room couch, I also found a new suspect."

She blushed, and self-consciously covered her mouth with her other hand. "Mm hmm..."

"The fingerprints in the blood were Joel Hostings'," he pressed on. But it sounded like there was a frog in his throat. "The blood they were in belonged to Mark Kenley, though."

"Puts–" she started to say, but had to clear her throat before going on, "–puts Joel Hostings there recently. Sometime after the shoot out, he might've escaped while we were there. They aren't new suspects, though."

"I'm getting to that," he said in annoyance.

And she smiled: his irritation was still cute.

"I want you to be careful out there," he said, "because that blood pool in the backyard belonged to someone with the first victim's last name."

She frowned in puzzlement. "A Joplin?"

"That's right," he confirmed. "A Jason Joplin."

Her mouth fell open slightly at the same time as her hand's grip on the phone weakened. She almost dropped it for a second, but had to force her fingers to grip it again when she felt it slipping.

"Jason Joplin..." she repeated. "Are you sure."

"Positive," he answered. "Just ask Greg, it was his DNA machine that did it."

Immediately, it boiled up in her stomach. Anger... and that irrational sense of self-disappointment.

"What does he look like? What's the photo on the printout show you?"

"Um..." – there was the sound of papers shuffling on the other line before he answered her – "...he's black. Kind of tall, about six feet. Dark green eyes, prominent nose..."

She stamped her foot. "Damn it, Nick!"

The paper shuffling stopped. "What? What did I do? What's wrong?"

"I just let him walk out the computer store!" she hissed into the mouth piece. "He played me like a fool!"

"What are you talking about?"

"He was in here," she said, wiping newly formed sweat off her forehead. "He was leaning against this hideous decoration, looking really down. We had a conversation about what it's like to be on the force, and his family troubles and everything! I mean, assuming he wasn't playing dumb and lying to me, that is..."

For a moment, Nick was silent. And she could just see him in her mind's eye turning red and grinding his teeth together to keep from letting it out.

"I see..." was all he said after a few uncomfortable seconds. "Well, don't blame yourself, Sara. How were you supposed to know? Telekinesis?"

In spite of herself, she giggled. "Nick, that's the ability to move things with the mind. You're talking about telepathy..."

"Okay, Greg," he quipped. "My apologies for mixing up comic book powers, but seriously: you don't have either of them. Don't beat yourself up over it."

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I'll remember that the next time you make an irrational expectation of yourself. Listen, Brass' interview is done. I'll tell him."

"Okay," he affirmed. "Come back in one piece."

"I'll be fine. I promise. See you later."

But as she clicked the phone shut and Brass came up to her, his expression was the utmost in contradiction to his earlier words. She bit her lower lip.

"Not all good, huh?"

He shook his head. "No. No, not at all, actually. He doesn't know anything. He's Janice Kenley's nephew, son of her brother. Her brother who lives in Florida. But I can confirm he's got nothing to do with this, because he's a trainee for the force. His class was in session last night, I even saw him myself. We got nothing here, which means we got nothing, period. No leads..."

She rubbed her eye. "Yeah we do," she replied. "There was a lead standing right here just a few minutes ago. But I let him walk right out the door just before Nick called to tell me."

Brass' eyebrows came together. "What?"

"There was a blood pool in the backyard of Veronique Gorsha's house," she elaborated. "Nick and Greg matched it to a Jason Joplin. The young, gentlemanly liar who was just chatting me up over there a few minutes ago."

Brass' expression leveled out a little. "Oh..." was all he said.

* * *

Nick scratched his forearm nervously at the look on Sara's face. There was a wall of steel and bullet-proof glass separating her from him, but she still looked like a volcano on the brink of eruption. His eyes moved over to Brass, who looked much the same, but was pacing around behind Sara. Across the interrogation table, Veronique Gorsha did not look anymore impressed than it sounded like she had last time.

"So, what's all this about?" she asked through her smacking lips. "I thought you guys were done with me."

"Not quite, we had a couple more questions," said Sara.

Nick's scratching went up from his arm to his neck as a grin settled on his face. Her voice had gone from angry to thinly-contained.

"Look, I already told you everything I'm gonna tell you," Ms. Gorsha retorted.

"Absolutely sure?" asked Brass. "'Cause we heard something interesting from a homeless guy sleeping in your basement."

Ms. Gorsha frowned. "There wasn't no homeless guy sleeping in my basement."

"Yes, there was," said Sara. "A homeless guy named Frank, actually. He was pretty comfortable down there, even when a gun fight erupted on the floor above him."

Ms. Gorsha turned away with a roll of her eyes, reminding Nick of one of his nieces who had just turned ten a few weeks ago. He put his hands on his hips and glared at her through the glass.

"That was your fault," insisted Ms. Gorsha. "If you weren't cops and this wasn't such a police state, you'd be int trouble for that."

Brass' smile betrayed his unprofessional amusement. "I doubt that very seriously, but think what you like, Veronique. What we're wondering about right now is if you know this guy."

Sara slipped the photo of Jason Joplin from her copy of the case file and held it up for Ms. Gorsha to see.

"His blood was found in your backyard," explained Sara. "Usually when someone bleeds as much as the pool we found in someone's yard, the owner has some idea of who they are."

Nick half-expected her to deny any knowledge, but was surprised when she continued to squint at the photo in Sara's hand. It was a small surprise compared to the next words she said, though.

"Lucille's son has a record? Never knew that..."

"Only a small one," said Brass. "Arrested once for possession of weed. It's barely considered a drug anymore."

"Wait, wait, wait..." interrupted Sara. "Wait a second, go back. Did you say 'Lucille's son'?"

Ms. Gorsha leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. "You mean you God-like officers of the law didn't know?"

"Bitch," Nick muttered against his will.

"She's the one you're looking for," continued Ms. Gorsha. "This whole damn thing was her idea."

Sara slowly leaned back and slid the picture back into her folder.

"What do you mean?" inquired Brass.

"She's been calling the shots from minute one," replied Ms. Gorsha. "When her oldest son came back and announced he was having a sex change, she called us all together. Set up the whole plan."

Both of Nick's hands flew up over his face. He leaned back and let a muffled profanity escape his lips.

"You know, if you hurry, you might still catch her," said Ms. Gorsha. "She gave us a rendezvous point. I'm supposed to be there in twenty minutes. She might not come now, though. Everything's gone wrong, and she had a pretty elaborate escape plan, you know?"

"Where at?" demanded Sara. "Where's she going, Veronique."

"The old medical factory, outside the north entrance to town," answered Ms. Gorsha without hesitation. "Bitch left me to rot in prison, hope to see her here with me."

"Your attitude hasn't exactly helped your case, but it's sound enough logic, I guess," rattled off Brass. Then to the attending officer, "Take her back to her cell!"

"Hey, don't I get something for all that?" questioned Ms. Gorsha sharply.

"Oh, yeah," added Brass. "Thank you, you've been very helpful."

Nick laughed once from behind the mirror.

"You suck," Ms. Gorsha exclaimed as she was being led out.

"I try," countered Brass.

But even as the officer dragged the uncooperative woman off, Nick's eyes were for Sara. She was taking calming deep breaths as she stood up from the table and followed Brass out the door. He watched her as they both came around the corner and up to him. The sight of her slumped shoulders made his arms twinge.

"Okay, I know exactly what factory she's talking about," said Brass, all business. "We leave in five minutes, see you out front."

"Got it," said Nick.

Brass hadn't stopped walking as he'd come out. Just kept going straight down the hall towards the front entrance, reaching for his radio as he went.

Nick turned to Sara, who yawned for the first time in what felt like forever and collapsed against the wall.

"You okay?" he asked cautiously.

"Oh, I'm just great," she replied sarcastically. Then she paused, picking at an imperfection on the steel wall across from her. "Say what you will, Nick," she said a second later, "I wish I'd somehow known who he was..."

The humming sound that seemed to pervade throughout the building was the only sound for a moment. It was hard to think what to say, because it wasn't as if he'd never felt the same way. But he felt compelled to say SOMETHING... Because even if he had always come to realize he was being ridiculous later, he wasn't sure if she did.

She seemed a lot harder on herself than anyone else he'd ever met. Even as she determinedly avoided looking at him and blinked twice to clear the glistening moisture forming at the bottom of her eyes, he was certain she spent more time than most obsessing over the what-could-have-beens of life. For a moment, he wondered what ever inspired her to get into this line of work...

"That's not rational," he said sternly. "There's no way you could have known."

"I'm a CSI," she whispered. "I'm supposed to notice these things. What if he goes and kills somebody else we don't even know is connected to the situation yet?"

And there was his answer. What better line of work for a guilt driven person than searching for justice? Even if the victim didn't always turn out to be innocent, that was the stereotype. As he searched his head for something further to say, he found it hard to imagine her doing anything else in her life, all of a sudden.

"We don't even know if he killed anyone we DO know is connected to the situation, yet. And You're not a psychic," he finally said. "You're still just a person like the rest of us."

Her nod of acceptance didn't seem very truthfully accepting. Just a gesture, hoping to get him off of it. He pressed his lips together and exhaled through his nose, hoping that his own building frustration went out with his air.

"Let's go," she said. "We need to be on time to meet Brass."

Her shoulder brushed his as she walked past, leaving a burning feeling that trailed down his arm and into his chest as it did. His other hand traced it lightly, eyes on the floor where her feet had just been standing and eyebrows relaxing into a more neutral position. When he looked back over his shoulder after her, he saw how slow and measured her steps were. It rousted him to jog down the hall after her and keep up.

* * *

The wind had picked up significantly, but the rain seemed to lessen on the outside of town. Not disappear, but lessen. Sara had been tense the whole ride out, jolting every time the thunder sounded across the sky. Unlike earlier, he was sure taking her hand wouldn't help...

The squad cars with their loud sirens and flashing lights sped along the slightly curvy roads leading out to Ms. Gorsha's given rendezvous point. The silhouette of the factory rose in front of them out of the morning mist like a twisted sea of metal and rust. The raindrops spattering on it stood out to Nick so much that he could almost convince himself he could hear them in spite of the police sirens.

Brass' car came to a stop first. He barked some orders into the radio about the two CSIs keeping a clear distance. Sara showed a sign of life for the first time since they'd gotten in the car by looking up at Nick with the same puzzled expression he was sure he was wearing. But try as he might to squint through the fog, he wasn't seeing anything...

Until they came around the corner, that is. At once it became clear that some of the fog wasn't really fog. It was smoke, coming from the crashed car at the base of an old looking telephone pole.

There were four bodies outside of it, one lying down and three sitting up. The sitting ones were smaller, and two of them were by the longer one lying down. Nick's jaw fell open and his eyes widened when he saw them getting up and rushing to Brass.

"Our dad's hurt!" one of them yelled.

"It's Mark Kenley."

Nick looked over at Sara after she spoke, but she was already closing the passenger door behind her. He followed her example, slamming the door shut as he got to his feet. From a standing position it was easy to see that it was, indeed, Mark Kenley.

"Call the paramedics!" commanded Brass from by the three boys.

As he got closer, Nick could see that Mark Kenley was bleeding from the head and barely moving. Aside from the very slow up and down movements of his chest, anyway...


	17. Duped by a Murderer

The dust settled shortly after the paramedics arrived. Mark Kenley was loaded up and taken, but it was hard to watch his sons freak out. They couldn't be expected to understand, after all... and remarkably, none of them had sustained any serious injuries. A worker from Child Services took them away instead, about fifteen minutes after the ambulance left.

Yet even in spite of the grave-looking situation, Sara was humming to herself from the other side of the crashed car they were processing. Nick smiled as he began to recognize the multiple tunes she was begin to let run together. After a few minutes, she went from humming to signing every few words of whatever song she was on. He coulda swore he recognized some country in there...

"Are you sure you're all right, there, darlin'?" he asked after five minutes or so of this.

"Absolutely," she replied without hesitation. "Every day is a winding road. Don't you listen to Sheryl Crow, cowboy?"

"On occasion," he said back. "When she's on the radio, but that does happen to be my favorite song of hers."

"Then we agree," she said through a wide grin. "Unless my humming's bothering you."

"Hell, no," he hastened to assure. "I told you, you have a pretty good singing voice. I seem to remember you telling me it was a habit, though."

She looked up from dusting the steering wheel. "A habit I'm no longer trying to break, if that's quite all right with you, Mr. Stokes."

"I have no objections."

She went back to her dusting enthusiastically. For a moment, he watched her face change expressions three times in three seconds. He ran a hand through his short hair and knelt down by his kit so that he would look busy when he asked her the next question.

"I take it, then, you're feeling better?"

She nodded. "You bet. I can't wait for the shift to be over, but at least the boys are okay."

"Yeah, at least..." he agreed. "You were right."

She frowned at him. "What?"

"You were right," he repeated. "About not worrying too much about the boys."

"That was you," she corrected. "Coercing me into lunch, remember?"

"Oh, right," he conceded. "But I seem to remember you saying the same thing at different times..."

"Maybe I did," she shrugged. "What matter is, they're going to be fine."

"Mrs. Freila will be happy," added Nick. "Happier than we'll be by the end of this, I'm sure."

"What do you mean?"

He snapped the lid on his kit open and dug around through the bottom of it for a new pair of gloves. The literal dust was getting on each pair he used so fast it was beginning to contaminate the evidence.

"Well, I can't speak for you, but... it's been my experience that each case sucks. Even when it's a good day, it's not, you know?" He finally found a pair and tore open the package with his teeth. "Somebody dies or gets beaten or raped or something... Hard to sleep afterward."

"I don't know, I sleep pretty well," she said.

"That's because you never unwind," he argued. "Even when you're at home, all you do is read forensics journals. You're more used to it."

She looked over at him with a mocking glare.

He threw his hands up. "Sorry, sunshine, but you do. I, however, am not gonna be able to sleep so well after this one. Especially not if it isn't solved by the time Grissom shows up and kicks us off the clock."

She brushed her hair out of her left eye. "It's not like I never have any trouble sleeping, Nick. Just not that much. And at the moment, I'm really too tired to worry about Grissom taking over our case. And if you find that you're really struggling THAT hard to get to sleep, just come by my house. I promise, you'll sleep like a rock."

It took a few moments after she had already bent down with a flashlight to check the lower seats that her words caught up to him. He snapped his head up and looked at her with a partially-open mouth. But she was too buried in her work to notice. He chuckled once and went to join her.

"I've got a gun," announced Sara, just as he got down to his knees to look under the passenger's seat.

He clicked his flashlight on and startled a little when something shiny gleamed back at him. He averted the light to reduce the glare and squinted at it in the limited lighting under the seat. It took him another moment, but he reached out and plucked one carefully off the car floor when he realized what it was.

"Yeah?" he challenged playfully. "I've got shell casings."

She repeated her earlier glare. "Must you hog all my thunder?"

He raised his hands in surrender. "Have at it, Miss Sidle!"

"Thank you," she said. "Hand me your printing powder, mine's all out."

He obliged, tossing it deftly through the open car doors from his hands to hers. She smiled in thanks and untwisted the lid while he got back to his feet and shined his light all over the chair parts of the seats. Something else – wet and viscous – caught his eye after a few moments of this.

"Blood," he stated. "All over the driver's seat."

"Prints," she stated back, parroting his style. "All over the gun."

"Bet they're Mark Kenley's," he said. "Probably the gun he shot at us with back at the house."

"Yeah, I think so, too. But, better run them to be sure."

He nodded once and went to the back seat. The door handle was old, and even more rusty than the rest of the car was. For such a successful man with a small family business, Nick found it remarkable that Mr. Kenley couldn't afford a better car. It took some real elbow grease to get the door to open, too. He was prepared to guess none of the Kenley boys went in or out of this door.

"You missed something, tricky Nicky."

He looked up from the dank, smelly backseat to his crime scene investigating partner. She stood proudly by the passenger's side door with a swab in her hand. Her grin elicited one from him, as well.

"Some kind of red liquid from the dashboard," she clarified. "Doesn't look like anything I recognize, at the moment."

"Well, good for you," he afforded. "Shall I take another bow?"

"It would be nice..."

One hand out, he did as told to her general amusement. When he stood up, he found that she was a lot closer than she had been before he went down. She pressed her lips to his just slightly once before edging around him and returning to her kit on the other side of the door. He sniffed once and went back to the car.

It was a red interior, with blue seat belts and tan-colored upholstery on the seats. A truly unattractive color, he thought. But it made the spotting the next find easier, and for that he was grateful.

"Fibers?" he half-said, half-inquired. "Fibers on the seat."

"Are they gray and purple?"

He leaned in a little closer with his light. "Yeah," he confirmed a second later. "They are."

"Good. We have some more of them back at the lab. Maybe they match."

"If they do..." he said, pulling a jar out of his pocket and unscrewing the lid, "...I'll find it."

"Oh, I know. You're an expert on them."

"And hairs," he added indignantly. "Don't forget the hairs!"

"And hairs," she gave. "We've got a lot to go on, here..."

"Yeah, we do!" he half-shouted.

But just as he was about to back out of the car through the rear passenger's side, his hand came down on something wet. So wet, it was cold even against his gloved skin.

"Gross!" he exclaimed.

The sound of hurried footsteps, and suddenly Sara's head was beside him. "What's the matter?"

"I've just put my hand down in something," he explained. "See?"

She blinked a couple of times and arranged her face into something comical.

"Damn it... Would you hand me a swab so I can get this off of me?"

"Yeah," she replied. "Yeah, gladly. Here."

He took the one she had gotten off her vest and collected a sample of the strange stuff.

Suddenly, there was a loud screeching sound behind them. Sara's presence disappeared first, and he followed after her immediately. After the dark interior of the car, the low sun was still enough to make his blink against its light. But he could still see the car that had just come to a halt behind the police cruisers. There was a vague struggling sound and a car door slammed.

"Geez!"

That was Sara... and she had sucked some air in through her teeth. He yanked the wet glove off his hand with the other one and used his bare hand to rub his eyes clear.

It was Joel Hostings. And he had just hit the ground under the push of three police officers. Including Brass, who appeared to be taking great pleasure in slapping the cuffs on the suspect.

* * *

The sun was rising. Despite her words back at the crime scene, it gave Sara a bit of a panic. Joel Hostings' sudden appearance had put a little more fire in her. So when she looked over at Nick and saw that he was taking his sweet time examining everything he pulled out of the evidence pile, she didn't hesitate to reach over and overturn the box.

"Hey!" he protested lightly.

"Ssh, ssh," she retorted. "Just help me find the new stuff."

She scrambled around through the plastic bags and little glass jars for a few moments with definite impatience. It briefly registered that Nick wasn't doing anything, but she reasoned away her flash of irritation that she was really moving too fast for him to be of any effect, anyway... And did she really want to have to work around his lazy, unmotivated ass? She thought not.

Then the bags slowly descended into her line of vision. From above. She turned her head to his grinning figure and blinked in further confusion for a second.

"I've got it right here," he explained, when she didn't do anything but gape at him.

She exhaled in her annoyance and snatched them from his hand. "Thank YOU," she emphasized. "Now, what goes where..."

"Mandy gets the easy part, if you wanna run the prints from the gun to her," he offered. "Slow down a little bit, huh?"

"No," she refused without a thought. "I want to get this done. Come on, Nick, bring back that gusto. That sense of adventure of yours that had us snooping around in Grissom and Catherine's case on evaluation day."

"Yeah, and I still got the lowest score on the team..." he mused offhandedly. "In case you were still interested."

"Oh, very," she said dismissively. "Okay, new plan: divide and conquer. You take the DNA and print evidence out. I've got the rest."

"You sure, there, commando? Would you like a tranquilizer or something first?"

She let her hand fall onto the table. "Nick..."

"Alright, alright," he surrendered. "I'm going."

She watched him go with a huff of impatience. "Jeez..." she muttered to herself.

Even with his evidence pieces, she still had a lot left to go through herself. Biting down on her lip, she wished for a moment she had let him do that hard part, Texas gentleman that he was... But there was no other way around it, and the ray of light that fell through the very high window reminded her that time was running out. When she remembered Grissom, Catherine and Warrick leaving earlier, it made her glare. But when she thought of one of them solving the case...

She grabbed the bullet casings first and went down the hall to do a ballistics test with the two guns she had collected. Bobby wouldn't be in yet, but she could always record her results on the computer in the materials lab. But as she loaded the gun for firing, she heard footsteps and a squeaking sound.

"Sidle?"

She looked over her shoulder. It was Ecklie.

"What are you doing in here so early?" he inquired.

"Working," she answered flatly. "You might want to put some mufflers on."

"What are we checking?" he said before applying the thick, headphone-shaped mufflers to his ears.

"Standard ballistics," she replied. "Two shots!"

She handed the gun to Ecklie while she dug through the rubber balls in search of the bullet. She found it at the very bottom, with a wave of supremacy.

"This is a nice specimen," observed Ecklie. "Where'd you find it?"

"Underneath a couch in one of the suspect's houses. Can you hand me the other one?"

"The shoot out?" he questioned, and passed the other gun over. "That sounded... dangerous."

"Mm hmm."

She was thankful her back was turned. Even if he wasn't HER supervisor, he was A supervisor. And rolling her eyes in his direction, as she had involuntarily done at his false show of concern, would probably have turned out badly for her.

"Two shots!" she again called out, when the second gun was ready for action.

The second bullet didn't sink to the bottom. It tumbled out into her fingers when she overturned the tub. She knew she wouldn't be able to tell much, but she still lifted a bullet from each gun up to her eyes and squinted. At a quick glance, there was a very visible scratch on the bullet from the gun found in the car that didn't seem to appear on any of the other bullets. Except for the second shot from the test she'd just run.

"I don't think it's the second one," Ecklie commented.

"Me, either," she agreed. "Here's the one I'm comparing it to."

Like her, he raised the bullet from her evidence bag to his eyes... and switched out the other bullets in his other hand after a brief once-over.

"This one looks like your best bet," he observed after a minute or so. "See how jaded the tips are?"

"Yeah. On both bullets..." She gathered up the guns, and the various bullets in separate jars. "I need to get it back to the materials lab."

"Good luck," he offered formally, handing over the bullets.

"Thanks. You, too."

Back in the materials lab, she was slightly disappointed to find that Ecklie was right. Microscopic comparisons confirmed that the bullets came from the gun found in Veronique Gorsha's house. Which meant they had no ammo to tie to the gun found in the car. The shooting had become another investigation the ended up on swing shift's desk, so she wouldn't be able to compare the rounds she and Nick had so deftly avoided until that case was closed. With a sigh, she gave up on it and sorted them back into the respectively-labeled jars.

Her luck turned out better with the fibers, though: a perfect match. So perfect, in fact, that they seemed to have been torn from the same source right next to each other. There was a spindle on the end of the first that wound right into the second. She smirked at them and marked them off of her list.

Upon closer inspection, the red liquid became obvious even before she ran the sample and printed the results. It was red nail polish, and it was the smell of it that tipped her off. Without the desert winds all around her, it carried itself into her nose poignantly. She sniffled and exhaled to clear it away, but it still made her eyes water. That was when Nick came back in.

"What's wrong?" he asked at once, alarmed.

"Oh, it's this stuff," she said. "It's nail polish. Here." She thrust the bag with the swab back into his hands and rubbed her nose lightly. "Did you find anything?"

He looked up from his confused contemplation of the offensive evidence item. "Hmm? Oh, yeah...! Yeah, I did. Those prints come back to Jason Joplin, and, according to Greg's machine, so does the blood."

"Wonderful," she sulked. "Duped by a murderer."

"It happens," he tried to reassure. "Even to the best of us."

"Well, not to me," she argued. "I'm the best of the best."

"I figured," he conceded with a smile. "But this is good news! We can place him there."

"Yeah. Problem is, how long was he there before we were?"

"And how long before we got there did he leave?"

For a moment, they arranged the rest of the evidence in silence. It was a satisfying feeling to see the pile of loose ends lessening, but the things that remained posed more pressing questions in Sara's mind the longer they lingered...

Nick's pager buzzed quite suddenly, startling even him, it seemed. If the way he jumped and his eyebrows came together in an adorable frown was any indication... But whatever he saw there must've driven it from his mind, because he looked up with a much better expression on his face.

"It's Brass," he said. "We're ready for Mr. Hostings' interrogation."


End file.
